Infernalis

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⛥ ⊱⋅•⋅ 𝔅𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔦𝔰𝔪 - intro posts

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⛥ ⊱⋅•⋅ 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔉𝔞𝔳𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔡 - fav posts

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⛥ ⊱⋅•⋅ [?] ℭ𝔬𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔭𝔱 - alter creations

♱୧‿︵ Other Blogs (alter specific):

Most of the time it happens so fast you don’t even notice the press release going out.

You don’t think “I’m about to manipulate someone.” You think “I’m helping.”

You don’t think “I’m lying.” You think “I’m protecting their feelings.”

You don’t think “I’m controlling them.” You think “I’m showing them the right way.”

You don’t think “I’m angry and I want to hurt them.” You think “I’m just being honest.”

See the pattern?

The behavior stays exactly the same. Only the headline changes. The dangerous part is that the new headline often feels completely true while you’re writing it. That’s why it’s so hard to catch. Your brain isn’t sitting in the corner twirling a villain moustache. It genuinely believes the press release it just issued. That doesn’t make the press release accurate. It just makes it convincing.

One of the biggest mistakes I made for years was confusing bluntness with honesty. I told myself people needed to hear the truth. Sometimes they did. Sometimes I was just being a rude cunt and calling it authenticity. There’s a difference. Honesty tells the truth. Cruelty enjoys how the truth lands and uses the damage as proof of its own superiority. Your ego does not care about that distinction. It cares about keeping its reputation intact so you can still look in the mirror without flinching. That’s why shame is such a powerful trigger. Embarrassment, fear of looking stupid, the sudden drop into feeling small; those emotions don’t just hurt. They activate the PR department at full volume. Suddenly the story rewrites itself.

“They didn’t disagree with me, they’re too simple to understand.”

“They didn’t set a healthy boundary, they’re being cruel for no reason.”

“They weren’t busy, they’re ignoring me on purpose.”

“I didn’t make a mistake, the instructions were bad.”

Notice something? Every rewrite has the same ending: therefore I don’t have to examine myself. That’s the product being sold. Comfort. Not truth. The PR department isn’t trying to discover reality. It’s trying to make sure you can still stand yourself.

Here’s where people get confused. Explaining behavior is not the same as excusing it. An explanation sounds like this: “I manipulated you. I understand why I did it. It was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m working on changing it.”

An excuse sounds like this: “Well, I have NPD,” or “I was only trying to help,” or “You know how my brain is.”

One accepts responsibility. The other tries to make responsibility disappear under a pile of diagnosis and good intentions. They are not the same thing and treating them like they are is how you stay stuck. One lie I had to bury permanently was “It’s okay to be rude as long as you’re being honest.” No. You can be direct without treating people like targets. If the truth only ever comes out wrapped in humiliation, ask yourself whether your goal was honesty or winning. The PR department loves winning. It does not give a single shit if the relationship loses in the process.

The biggest cost of believing your own press releases is that eventually other people stop believing them. You can rewrite the story a hundred different ways. You can change the wording, explain your intentions, insist people misunderstood. Eventually someone sees the pattern, and once they do the story stops working. You cannot PR your way out of a reputation you’ve earned through repeated behavior. One of the hardest lessons I learned was about lying. I convinced myself I was protecting people from uncomfortable truths. Really I was protecting myself from uncomfortable conversations. Once the lie came out, the damage was always worse than if I’d just told the truth to begin with. Truth usually hurts once. Lies keep charging interest.

So how do you interrupt the PR department? Simple. Not easy. The moment your brain starts explaining your behavior, question the explanation. Not because it’s automatically wrong, but because it has a massive conflict of interest. If your first thought is “They disrespected me,” force yourself to write three other headlines. “Maybe they misunderstood.” “Maybe they were distracted.” “Maybe they know something I don’t.” You don’t have to believe those alternatives immediately. You just have to admit they are possible. That’s usually enough to slow the PR department down, because certainty is where it does its best and most dangerous work.

Exercise

For the next week, every time you catch yourself saying “I only did it because…,” write down two versions of the story.

Version One:

The Press Release: the explanation that makes you look reasonable, justified, or misunderstood.

Version Two:

The Security Camera: no motives, no assumptions, only the observable facts of what actually happened.

Compare them. Ask yourself:

What changed between the two versions?

What disappeared?

What did my brain add?

What did it conveniently leave out?

Most of the time it happens so fast you don’t even notice the press release going out.

You don’t think “I’m about to manipulate someone.” You think “I’m helping.”

You don’t think “I’m lying.” You think “I’m protecting their feelings.”

You don’t think “I’m controlling them.” You think “I’m showing them the right way.”

You don’t think “I’m angry and I want to hurt them.” You think “I’m just being honest.”

See the pattern?

The behavior stays exactly the same. Only the headline changes. The dangerous part is that the new headline often feels completely true while you’re writing it. That’s why it’s so hard to catch. Your brain isn’t sitting in the corner twirling a villain moustache. It genuinely believes the press release it just issued. That doesn’t make the press release accurate. It just makes it convincing.

One of the biggest mistakes I made for years was confusing bluntness with honesty. I told myself people needed to hear the truth. Sometimes they did. Sometimes I was just being a rude cunt and calling it authenticity. There’s a difference. Honesty tells the truth. Cruelty enjoys how the truth lands and uses the damage as proof of its own superiority. Your ego does not care about that distinction. It cares about keeping its reputation intact so you can still look in the mirror without flinching. That’s why shame is such a powerful trigger. Embarrassment, fear of looking stupid, the sudden drop into feeling small; those emotions don’t just hurt. They activate the PR department at full volume. Suddenly the story rewrites itself.

“They didn’t disagree with me, they’re too simple to understand.”

“They didn’t set a healthy boundary, they’re being cruel for no reason.”

“They weren’t busy, they’re ignoring me on purpose.”

“I didn’t make a mistake, the instructions were bad.”

Notice something? Every rewrite has the same ending: therefore I don’t have to examine myself. That’s the product being sold. Comfort. Not truth. The PR department isn’t trying to discover reality. It’s trying to make sure you can still stand yourself.

Here’s where people get confused. Explaining behavior is not the same as excusing it. An explanation sounds like this: “I manipulated you. I understand why I did it. It was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m working on changing it.”

An excuse sounds like this: “Well, I have NPD,” or “I was only trying to help,” or “You know how my brain is.”

One accepts responsibility. The other tries to make responsibility disappear under a pile of diagnosis and good intentions. They are not the same thing and treating them like they are is how you stay stuck. One lie I had to bury permanently was “It’s okay to be rude as long as you’re being honest.” No. You can be direct without treating people like targets. If the truth only ever comes out wrapped in humiliation, ask yourself whether your goal was honesty or winning. The PR department loves winning. It does not give a single shit if the relationship loses in the process.

The biggest cost of believing your own press releases is that eventually other people stop believing them. You can rewrite the story a hundred different ways. You can change the wording, explain your intentions, insist people misunderstood. Eventually someone sees the pattern, and once they do the story stops working. You cannot PR your way out of a reputation you’ve earned through repeated behavior. One of the hardest lessons I learned was about lying. I convinced myself I was protecting people from uncomfortable truths. Really I was protecting myself from uncomfortable conversations. Once the lie came out, the damage was always worse than if I’d just told the truth to begin with. Truth usually hurts once. Lies keep charging interest.

So how do you interrupt the PR department? Simple. Not easy. The moment your brain starts explaining your behavior, question the explanation. Not because it’s automatically wrong, but because it has a massive conflict of interest. If your first thought is “They disrespected me,” force yourself to write three other headlines. “Maybe they misunderstood.” “Maybe they were distracted.” “Maybe they know something I don’t.” You don’t have to believe those alternatives immediately. You just have to admit they are possible. That’s usually enough to slow the PR department down, because certainty is where it does its best and most dangerous work.

Exercise

For the next week, every time you catch yourself saying “I only did it because…,” write down two versions of the story.

Version One:

The Press Release: the explanation that makes you look reasonable, justified, or misunderstood.

Version Two:

The Security Camera: no motives, no assumptions, only the observable facts of what actually happened.

Compare them. Ask yourself:

What changed between the two versions?

What disappeared?

What did my brain add?

What did it conveniently leave out?

Most people spend time with friends because they actually enjoy their company. They miss them. They laugh. They connect. Supply isn’t necessarily about connection. It’s about regulation. It’s your brain desperately looking for something outside of itself to fix something happening inside of itself. Sometimes that looks like admiration. Sometimes respect. Sometimes winning an argument or being the smartest person in the room. Sometimes being needed. Sometimes being irreplaceable. Different brains chase different flavors of the same drug.

Mine never cared much about fame. I genuinely don’t understand the urge to have strangers know who you are. If people find something I make helpful, great. If they don’t, life goes on. That was never the real itch. Being seen isn’t the same as being known, and most of the time people are only offering the first one anyway. When I was younger my supply looked different. I wanted to be the favorite friend. The interesting one. The person everyone wanted around. For a while it was even sexual attention from adults. Don’t do that. Seriously. Trauma has a wonderful habit of convincing you that validation and exploitation are the same fucking thing. They’re not.

As an adult the sources have shifted. Now it’s more likely to be creating something: a piece of art, a story, something personal that actually means something to me. Sometimes it isn’t about people at all. Sometimes sitting quietly in the paddock with our horse does more for my nervous system than a hundred compliments ever could. That wasn’t always true. One thing people consistently misunderstand is that supply and self-esteem are not the same thing. Self-esteem is your baseline. Supply is the external fuel your brain keeps trying to pour into it. If your self-esteem depends on supply, you’ve built a house that needs someone else to keep replacing the foundations every few hours.

When supply is plentiful you feel incredible. Confident. Capable. Almost unstoppable. For me it can border on feeling manic. Then the supply disappears and suddenly your brain decides everything is awful again. Nothing actually changed. The fuel did. That’s why supply is such a trap. It works… until it doesn’t. It’s exactly like scratching a mosquito bite. For a few seconds it feels fantastic. Then it itches even worse and you’ve made the problem larger. One of the biggest lies supply tells is the classic “if I could just get one more person to admire me / admit I’m right / notice how intelligent I am / love me enough, then I’d finally feel okay.” Maybe. For about five minutes. Then your brain starts scanning for the next hit. Supply doesn’t solve insecurity. It interrupts it. There’s a difference. And because the interruption feels so good in the moment, your brain keeps coming back for more. That’s why I compare it to an addiction without the courtesy of a clean withdrawal timeline.

If you decide to stop chasing it, don’t expect your brain to clap for you. It’s going to complain. A lot. You’ll feel restless, agitated, frustrated, like you’re denying yourself something you genuinely need. You’re not. You’re denying your brain its favorite shortcut. Those are not the same thing. Some forms of supply are more dangerous than others. For me sexual attention was one of them. Even while I was in relationships I’d sometimes feel the urge to go looking elsewhere. I never cheated, but the impulse was there and that’s already enough of a problem. That’s what happens when you use one person to regulate a problem that lives inside your own head. Eventually one person stops feeling like enough. That isn’t because your partner failed. It’s because you asked another human being to do a job they were never designed to do.

Supply can hide almost anywhere. Being needed. Being the nicest person. Being the smartest. Being the most moral. Being the most traumatized. If something becomes the primary thing you rely on to tell yourself you’re worthwhile, congratulations; your brain just turned it into supply. Even helping people can become unhealthy. If your identity depends on everyone needing you, you’re no longer helping because you want to. You’re helping because your brain panics at the thought of becoming unnecessary. One of the sneakiest versions is the performance of confidence. Some people inflate stories, exaggerate achievements, or always need to be the expert in the room. Not because they enjoy sharing knowledge, but because they need someone else to confirm they’re impressive. Real confidence doesn’t ask other people for permission to exist. Supply does.

So what do you actually do about it? The answer is frustratingly boring. You don’t feed it. You notice the craving when it shows up, then you sit with the discomfort instead of recruiting someone else to fix it for you. Go for a walk. Draw. Clean your room. Play with your dog. Build something. Read. Do literally anything that doesn’t involve turning another human into an emotional regulation device. At first it will feel terrible. Your brain will throw a full tantrum. Good. That means it noticed the routine changed. Recovery isn’t giving your brain everything it wants the second it demands it. It’s teaching it that discomfort is not an emergency.

Exercise

For the next week, every time you catch yourself wanting something from another person: not because it’s genuinely needed, but because you hope it’ll change how you feel about yourself; pause.

Ask yourself three questions:

What am I hoping they’ll give me? (Admiration? Reassurance? Agreement? Attention?)

If they gave it to me, how long would that feeling realistically last?

Is there something I can do for myself right now instead of asking someone else to regulate this feeling for me?

The ranking starts almost immediately and it runs on a short list of criteria: competence, confidence, intelligence, and occasionally kindness if I’m feeling generous that day. Then the software starts asking questions I never consciously chose to ask.

Can they help me?

Can I trust them?

Are they smart enough to notice what I’m doing?

How competent are they actually?

The uncomfortable part isn’t that the questions exist. The uncomfortable part is realizing I didn’t decide to ask them. The software did. That doesn’t make the answers correct. It just makes them automatic, and automatic is dangerous when the program is built to protect your ego instead of seeking truth.

My hierarchy isn’t one clean list. It’s several overlapping lists pretending to be one coherent system. The biggest categories are usefulness, intelligence, competence, and trustworthiness.

Usefulness asks what I can get out of this person.

Intelligence asks how carefully I need to think around them.

Competence asks whether they can actually deliver what I might need.

Trustworthiness asks whether they’re likely to expose behavior I’d rather keep hidden.

Not exactly the foundation for healthy connection. Here’s the uglier truth: the hierarchy changes how much I naturally care. The lower someone falls on the internal ladder, the easier it becomes to dismiss their feelings, their opinions, or even their wellbeing. That doesn’t mean I should. It means that’s what the software tries to do by default. Those are not the same thing, and confusing them is how you end up treating people like disposable tools while still calling yourself self-aware.

Authority figures get ranked the hardest. My brain seems pathologically obsessed with figuring out whether someone actually deserves the authority they hold. Family is messier. Close family gets judged less harshly than distant relatives, though the ranking still happens. Children and animals don’t really get ranked at all. They fall outside the system somehow, which is one of the few mercies in the whole mess. One thing I learned the hard way is that the hierarchy lies constantly. It whispers things like “If they don’t understand this immediately, they’re stupid,” “If they can’t think like you, they never will,” and “If they’re below you, you don’t need to listen.” The hierarchy isn’t trying to discover truth. It’s trying to protect my ego. If I can convince myself someone is beneath me, I don’t have to risk feeling beneath them. That’s the real function. Not superiority. Protection from shame, from feeling inferior, from having to admit I might be wrong or ordinary.

Ironically, the stronger the hierarchy became, the more fragile it actually was. Because if someone challenged it, I wasn’t just disagreeing with them. I felt threatened by them. Criticism became disrespect. Disagreement became evidence of their stupidity. Every conversation quietly turned into a competition nobody else realized we were having. The cost of that is higher than I expected. Very few of my relationships were completely free from ulterior motives. Even when I genuinely cared about someone, I’d still catch myself filtering them through usefulness, competence, or status. That realization hurt more than I wanted to admit.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned is this: caring about someone does not automatically stop you from hurting them. I learned that after hurting someone I genuinely valued. My affection didn’t magically override years of unhealthy ranking software. I still had to do the work. Thankfully, the hierarchy isn’t permanent or fixed. Mine still exists. I’m not going to pretend it disappeared because that would be a lie, and I’m done lying to myself about this shit. The difference now is that I catch it sooner. I don’t tell people where they rank anymore. I don’t assume the ranking is objective reality. Most importantly, I remind myself that people do not have to think like me to be intelligent. That sentence sounds obvious when you write it down. It wasn’t obvious when the software was running the show.

The practical override isn’t complicated. It’s just uncomfortable as hell. Every time you notice yourself mentally placing someone above or below you, stop. Don’t argue with the thought. Don’t try to justify it or fight it into silence. Just notice it. Then, force a different question. Not “Where do they rank?” Ask “Who are they?” Those two questions produce completely different relationships, and only one of them has any chance of being real.

Exercise

For one week, try catching one ranking every day. You don’t have to stop it. You probably can’t yet. Just notice it. Write it down if you want. Then ask yourself:

What quality was I ranking?

What emotion showed up underneath it?

Was I trying to protect my ego?

If I removed the ranking entirely, what would I actually know about this person?

If you’ve got ASPD traits, vulnerable NPD, trauma, or honestly just a long history of unhealthy coping mechanisms, chances are your software has learned some deeply questionable shortcuts. It thinks it’s helping. Most of the time those shortcuts did help you survive once upon a time. Survival software and healthy software are not the same thing, and a lot of people never update the program after the danger has passed. One of the biggest traps I fell into was believing that if I thought something, it had to be true.

“They looked at me funny.”

“They’re disrespecting me.”

“They questioned me on purpose.”

“They’re trying to embarrass me.”

Slow the fuck down. You had a thought. You did not receive a verified message from the universe confirming objective reality.

People do this with everything: relationships, politics, religion, arguments. If a belief protects us from discomfort, we cling to it like it’s hard evidence. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s just a very convincing story your brain keeps looping because changing the story feels worse than believing the lie. Thoughts aren’t facts. They’re guesses. Predictions. Old survival scripts running on autopilot. Sometimes they’re useful. Sometimes they’re complete garbage and the only thing they’re protecting is your ego.

Feelings aren’t much different. People love saying “trust your feelings” like they’re some pure inner compass. I don’t. Not blindly. If you’re dealing with a personality disorder, trauma, or any number of mental health issues, your emotional alarm system can be about as reliable as a smoke detector that goes off every time you make toast. That doesn’t mean your feelings are worthless. They’re data. Notice the difference. “I feel offended” is data. “They intended to disrespect me” is a conclusion you just invented and decided to treat like fact. Those are not the same thing, and treating them like they are is how you start manufacturing enemies out of thin air.

Before someone decides I’m telling people to ignore actual abuse, no. If you’re in a genuinely abusive or toxic situation, get out. This post isn’t about teaching you to tolerate mistreatment. It’s about learning not to invent threats every time your brain gets uncomfortable. Here’s where overrides come in. Imagine your brain is an overprotective security system that treats every small movement like a home invasion.

Someone disagrees with you: alarm.

Someone doesn’t text back quickly: alarm.

Someone criticizes you: alarm.

The system thinks it’s protecting the building. The problem is you’re the owner of the building, and your own security system keeps tackling you every time you try to walk through the front door.

An override isn’t smashing the security system with a hammer. It isn’t pretending the alarm isn’t screaming. It’s walking over to the keypad and saying, “Yeah, I know you’re freaking out. Stand the fuck down.” That takes practice. A lot of it. Most people think the only options are acting on the impulse or suppressing it until you explode later. I don’t think that’s true. Suppressing an impulse is standing there screaming internally while trying to look fine. Overriding it is giving your brain something else to do instead of the thing it’s begging for. Maybe your first impulse is to start an argument or cut someone down. Override. Walk away. Go cuss at the trees. Call someone safe. Write the rage down. Punch a pillow. Do literally anything except the exact thing your brain is demanding in that moment. Will it still suck? Absolutely. But you’ve interrupted the script, and that’s the entire point.

My hardest override has always been anger. When I’m angry I don’t just want to make a point. I want to win. I want to say the thing that cuts deepest because my brain mistakes humiliation for resolution. That’s not honesty. That’s using honesty as a weapon and calling it integrity. People hide behind that all the time. “I’m just being honest.” Maybe. Or maybe you’re throwing a Molotov cocktail and calling it constructive criticism. There’s a difference, and most of us know which one we’re actually doing.

One of the easiest and most useful overrides I ever learned was also the simplest: shut the fuck up. Seriously. Not everything deserves a response. Not every disagreement deserves a debate. Not every slight deserves a war. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is bite your tongue, sit on your damn hands, and leave the room before you get the chance to make it worse. Because here’s another uncomfortable truth: sometimes you cannot trust yourself in the moment. That isn’t weakness. That’s self-awareness. You wouldn’t hand a toddler a fork and point them toward a wall socket because you trust their excellent life choices. Sometimes your brain is the toddler. If you know you’re about to make things worse, walk away before you get the chance to prove it.

Finally, here’s the thing I want you to carry for the rest of this series. Your brain will tell you stories.

“They meant this.”

“They’re against you.”

“You’re right and they’re wrong.”

“They deserved it.”

Part I: Know Your Software

For a long time I thought this was an uncomplicated strength. And in many ways it is. It keeps me out of pointless drama. It stops me from escalating when escalation would be stupid. It makes me useful in crises. It means I rarely look back at a conflict and cringe at how irrational I was. My self-awareness + low emotional contagion + high pattern recognition make me very effective at being the person who can still see the board when everyone else is flipping the table.

But there is a cost that no one warns you about when you are consistently “the reasonable one.”

The Trap

Once people clock that you are the person who stays calm, who doesn’t take things personally, who can discuss ugly behaviour without immediately moralising or exploding, they start using you.

Not always maliciously. Often just lazily.

You become the designated:

Conflict mediator

Emotional dumpster

Reality-checker

Free therapist

Person who is expected to absorb shitty behaviour without “overreacting”

Because you can handle it. Because you have handled it before. Because you didn’t cry or scream or make it about your feelings last time, so clearly you don’t mind.

The problem is that capacity is not the same as consent.

Just because I can stay objective and functional while someone unloads their unfiltered chaos onto me does not mean I want to do it constantly, or that it costs me nothing.

It does cost me.

It costs energy.

It costs patience.

It costs the finite resource of me giving a shit.

And the more reliable you are at being reasonable, the less other people feel they need to be reasonable around you. They don’t self-edit. They don’t check their own projections as carefully. They don’t protect your peace because they have absorbed the idea that your peace is basically indestructible.

This is important: I am not talking about my actual close friends here.

With people I genuinely consider close, I don’t mind helping. I don’t keep a ledger. If they need to vent, process, or dump something ugly, I can hold it without resentment because the relationship is real and reciprocal. They are not just here for the service I provide; they are here for me, and I am here for them. That changes the entire equation.

The trap I’m describing mainly applies to two groups:

1. People I don’t know well yet (acquaintances, new contacts, semi-friends).

2. People who have decided I am their designated dumping ground instead of actually trying to be a friend.

The second group is the most draining. They want the benefits of my clarity, steadiness, and lack of judgement without offering any real relationship in return. They don’t check in. They don’t reciprocate. They don’t protect the dynamic. They just arrive with mess, expect me to process it cleanly, and then disappear until the next crisis. That is not friendship. That is unpaid labour.

How It Shows Up

I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has said some variant of:

“I can tell you this because you won’t judge me / you won’t get weird / you’re not like other people.”

What they often mean is:

“I can hand you the most unfiltered, self-indulgent, poorly-regulated version of myself and you will still process it cleanly and hand me back something useful.”

And I usually do. Because that is how I am wired, and because I value clarity. But every time I do it with someone who hasn’t earned that access, a quiet ledger in my head makes a note. This person is making withdrawals. Are they making any deposits? Do they ever bring me clean thinking, or reciprocal steadiness, or do they just bring mess and expect me to be the filter?

Being the reasonable one also means that when you finally do draw a boundary or express irritation, people act shocked. Betrayed, even. You have broken the unspoken contract. You were supposed to be the endless capacity. The neutral zone. The one who doesn’t have limits like normal people.

I have had people get genuinely angry at me for disengaging after months of being their free emotional processing machine. As if my previous free time and mental resources were something they were entitled to. As if me saying “I don’t have the bandwidth for this anymore” was an act of cruelty rather than basic self-preservation.

The Double Bind

There is a particularly stupid double bind that comes with this role:

If you stay reasonable, people use you.

If you stop being reasonable, people pathologise you.

Suddenly the same traits (self-awareness, bluntness, low reactivity) get re-framed. You’re not clear-headed, you’re cold. You’re not boundaried, you’re abandoning. You’re not refusing to be a dumping ground, you’re “splitting” or “showing your true colours” or whatever pop-psych language is currently in fashion.

This is especially sharp when you already carry stigmatised labels. People are pre-loaded to read any firmness from you as evidence of the disorder rather than evidence of a limit. So you end up in this exhausting loop where you have to be more regulated than everyone else just to be seen as equally entitled to basic boundaries.

What I Have Learned

I no longer think of selective objectivity as a pure strength. It is a tool, and like any tool it can be overused until it breaks the user.

These days I run clearer internal checks:

Is this person actually looking for clarity, or just looking for a place to put their mess?

Have they earned this level of access to my thinking?

Am I offering objectivity, or am I being conscripted into unpaid emotional labour?

If I stopped being available in this way, would the relationship have anything left?

I still value being able to see clearly when others can’t. I still take pride in not being ruled by emotional contagion. But I am much more selfish with it now; especially with people who have not put in the work to be actual friends.

Objectivity is a resource I choose to spend, not a public utility other people get to demand.

The right people (the real ones) respect the difference. They don’t just like me because I can hold their chaos without flinching. They like me enough to try not to hand me chaos in the first place; and when they do need to, it sits inside a real relationship instead of replacing one.

And the ones who get angry when I stop being endlessly reasonable? They were relating to the service I provided.

By their standards, I am lonely. I have friends. I have a partner. And beyond that, I have zero desire to expand the circle. Not because I hate people, but because most interactions feel like optional noise I didn’t ask for.

I love my partner; or at least my version of love, which for me means a stable, low-friction attachment where I can tolerate her presence indefinitely and actively show affection without it feeling like performance or obligation. A big part of why it works so smoothly is that she’s autistic. We think in similar patterns: direct communication, reduced reliance on unspoken emotional labor, and a shared understanding that not every silence needs filling. It removes most of the friction that usually builds when I’m around others.

With everyone else, though? I don’t seek new friends. The prospect is exhausting before it even starts. People come with layers of idiosyncrasies, emotional needs, and social expectations that drain my resources fast. I have to monitor their nonverbal cues, manage their feelings, and navigate their individual quirks while trying not to let my own flat affect or withdrawal get read as hostility. It’s a lot of cognitive overhead for something that gives me no real payoff.

The ones who try to get close specifically because of my disorders annoy me the most. It feels like they’re not interested in me as a person so much as in the clinical curiosity or the “edgy trauma narrative.” That kind of attention triggers a quick shutdown: polite distance at best, sharp disengagement at worst.

I’m genuinely content spending an entire day; or several, completely by myself, pursuing my own interests without any external input. Solitude isn’t a consolation prize; it’s the default setting that feels right. Social situations, on the other hand, turn me into someone even I don’t enjoy being around. The stress of constantly decoding emotions and cues builds fast. I get irritable, withdrawn, and unpleasant because my system is over capacity and just wants an exit.

This isn’t depression or self-pity talking. It’s how I’m wired. The same traits that protect me from worse outcomes also limit the kind of social life that looks “full” to outsiders. I’m not missing anything I actually want. I have the connections that matter to me, and the rest is optional overhead I’m happy to skip.