#disconnection

11/30/25.

Stare Kits were a band active in the late 1970s no-wave NYC scene. They apparently arose at the same time at Ut (who opened for Stare Kits and later played shows with The Fall and The Birthday Party). While the Stare Kits themselves only played three shows, their members played in other projects. Angela Jaeger was in Disconnection. Amy McMahon (later Amy Rigby) was in The Shams and later married Wreckless Eric. Michael McMahon joined his sister in Last Roundup in the mid 1980s

According to the Stare Kits' Bandcamp page, the band "embraced various musical influences such as The Slits, Buzzcocks, Jefferson Airplane and Wire.

I don't think I've been able to truly relate to anyone in my life. I believe part of that may come from my observations of behavior from my older sisters and older cousins and being able to learn what not to do or how not to behave.

Many people form bonds over being upset with their parents, as a very early example. Because I didn't have violent emotional outbursts like I would observe my sister to have, I wasn't punished in the same way, I didn't harbor the same frustration that other people might experience with their parents, and again, I never got to experience those dramatic emotions.

So when you start off early in life diverging from expected behavior, it doesn't set you up well. Not to mention the fact I went to a school of mostly white students as a nonwhite and multiracial/multiethnic student. White kids in this small school had established social groups they wouldn't diverge from, they looked at me differently and talked to me differently than they would their friends, and had a very distinct non-interest in interacting with me. (And the typical tropes of white girls being jealous of my hair).

Of course I had friends, but consistently it was only one or two I would be seeing outside of school, while my sisters and cousins had larger friend groups with more things going on.

I developed depression in middle school and at this point I think my more identifiable schizoid traits became more pronounced here. I was never all that happy as a child, but this is where it became very clear to outsiders that I wasn't doing well if they were paying attention.

At this time the rift between myself and others grew even larger. Kids would be hormonal, getting into relationships, smoking cigarettes and weed, drinking alcohol, and starting drama just for the hell of it. Those things people described as high school activities started in middle school.

In high school I got this feeling I was falling behind. I never experienced things other people experienced by the time they were in high school. I just wanted to drop out completely and move on. (I didn't, of course. My mother would never have allowed it.)

It became a phenomenon where when I was talking to someone new that I would get annoyed or frustrated when they tried to relate to me. I would tell them something that seems simple about me, and they would make an attempt to relate.

The issue is, they experience that specific thing for a different reason than I do. You think you get it but you really don't.

As an obvious example, people group withdrawn and solitary individuals into groups and labels but fail to recognize the reason someone might be withdrawn.

Similarly, someone might claim to despise people as I do, but still make an effort to seek out new friends and attend social events, which tells me no, you're not anything like me. Stop pretending to be.

This same phenomenon of people trying to seek relatability wherever they might find it also leads to the impulsive self diagnosis thing. People see a basic list of DSM symptoms (which are very surface level) and start imagining they have a disorder, ignoring the reasons behind those symptoms.

It's to the point where they even have to advise psychology students studying abnormal psychology to be aware of this and to avoid it.

I've seen people with other disorders able to bond over their shared experiences and provide one another with support, creating a sense of community, but there's something about schizoid pd that completely prevents me from being able to do that.

Early on, there were so many factors that prevented me from being able to properly connect with people in my family, and furthermore with classmates, which evolved into this full barrier between myself and everyone else.

I don't try to relate to anyone anymore, and it's irritating when people try to relate to me when I know they won't ever be able to fully understand.