the wrong side of the bed

sundays kill me. i suffer from being alone. the longer i am alone the lest human i feel. when i was in high school, i actually believed myself to be less than human. i don't know if i can explain... i felt myself to be so different and so much less than those around me that i actually felt like not quite the same species. a mutation that was not going to survive in the population, if you will.

sundays make me feel like this. left alone, i have no one to reassure me that i am human. i often don't speak to anyone until after noon. this is intolerable. it hurts, hurts, hurts. by two i am imagining that i am some sort of horned hell-beast with the stench of garbage seeping from my poors. why would anyone want to be near me?

i need to get this to stop. last week i was going to try to work on not needing other people so much. but, then i forgot to work on it.

Here is a tip for future reference: don't do your dissertation research in a place where your friends are not. When asked, Gay Seidman will confirm: it is the loneliest experience ever. I find myself anxiously awaiting the arrival of the roommate that I can't actually stand. Negative human contact is evidently better than none.

I totally get the less-than-human feeling when I've been out of human contact for a while. Thank god for blogs. They are the only thing keeping me vaguely human.

Hang in there. We are all here with you... you just can't see us.

thank you, AK! you are very sweet. i'm sorry you are so lonely in mexico.

Strangely, when I was a kid, I thought I was MORE human than other people. That is, while I was quite certain I was through-and-through human, up until my teens, I had the distinct suspicion that people around me might turn into zombies or werewolves when they were out of my sight. I don't mean this in a silly way. While I knew, in an intellectual way, this was impossible, I still feared it. I refused to sleep or even hang out in my room with the door closed, for fear that then I wouldn't hear when the transformation took place and my family became werewolves. If I were reading in my room and suddenly realized I had not heard any noise from other areas of the house in a while, I would panic at the thought that they had changed into werewolves and I was the only human left in the house, and now they might come kill and eat me. I would make some kind of noise or drop something so someone in the house would yell down the hall and ask what was going on, just so I could ascertain if they were still, in fact, human (I was convinced that having a human voice meant you were not a werewolf).

And let me point out...I sometimes go entire DAYS on the weekend without speaking a single word to anyone other than my pets. You may have to wait til after noon on Sundays, but at least someone does eventually interact with you. I do not have that guarantee.

Wy doesn't my last comment show up?

It's okay, I don't mind being lonely TOO much. I knew I would be lonely so I kind of prepared for it. I am really glad I talked to Gay before I left (see above comment) because I was afraid that my dread of being alone meant that I was a bad sociologist or something. She was like, no, field work is horribly lonely, that is the worst part of it.

Here is another way that I become less than human when I am alone too long. I start eating like crap. It's like, waaaaay too much effort to clean and cut and cook vegetables if it's just for me. So how about I just put some spaghetti sauce and cheese on a pita and make a mini-pizza! (That is what I am eating right now).

i think a mini-pizza sounds delicious! i would consider that a good meal and not be ashamed of it at all.