Why it's so complicated

I just got thinking about this while reading through other people's diaries and, well, just thinking (instead of writing dissertation). I've often enough mentioned my well-documented paranoia. I'm not the only one who has this problem, in fact I believe that most of us are paranoid/suspicious at least to some degree, but I guess I'm a more extreme case. Sometimes when people do something (or omit to do something) completely innocuous that no one else would give a second thought about, it will utterly convince me they do not like me, or have grown tired of me, or find me annoying, or want rid of me.

Because I am aware this is a problem of mine (and not of those other people), I can often talk myself out of it after a while, or I can get other friends to talk me out of it, or if the person in question does something reassuring the next time I speak to them I feel better again and overcome my fears. But it still inhibits me and also influences my behaviour towards others, and probably makes me act in ways that make little sense to others and can be seen as rather inconsistent. And exhausting. And sometimes scary.

I used to be (and still am to a large degree) very restrained in my show of affection - I rarely tell people how I really feel about them and this is mainly because I am scared of rejection. For if you don't tell someone you love them, what does it matter if they don't love you back. It's a matter of pride, which is another one of my problems. All the same, I am still (more or less openly) demanding constant attention and reassurance or the old paranoia will flare up again. I guess that makes me rather high maintenance sometimes.

To make matters worse, my paranoia makes it very hard for me to accept affection when I do get it. Since I am convinced people don't really like me, they must be either taking the piss or they want something from me and are being nice to me out of sheer calculation, so I then often react with a sort of cynical disbelief or even outright aggression. I have been working on this very hard as I know from the past that people have found this frustrating, but still I can't quite overcome it. This applies especially to people who give me the sort of confusing mixed signals that fuel my paranoia.

I guess my jealousy and possessiveness are somehow linked to my paranoia too. Since I am barely worth my friends' attention, every other person in their entourage is a huge threat to me: soon enough they will like them better and spend time with them and leave me to myself. Every moment they spend with them instead of me proves to me that they're not interested in me anymore. I cannot overstate the extremity of this: if someone has spent all night talking to me and then turn around to chat to someone else for 10 minutes, I immediately see this as the ultimate irrefutable proof that they have now abandoned me forever and love this person much much more than they have ever loved me (as I said, I can snap out of this after a while, but at that moment, that is how I feel and nothing else will make sense).

So, to sum it all up, I am needy, clingy, dependent and unable to form a healthy relationship that isn't extremely intense and exhausting (and I mean this in a friendship sense, since I don't want a proper relationship anyway - and can you see why?). So I'm thinking again maybe it would be easier to just not form any bonds with people. I don't miss friends when I don't have any. I do however miss them when I have them but they're not there for me. So without friends would be better. But annoyingly enough I seem to just slip into these friendship situations without noticing, and by the time I realise what I've got myself into it's too late and I'm already dependent on that person. Ja. So here you have a nice long self-critical entry for a change. Now to the dissertation.