No Signs Of Life

In case anyone ever wonders about my name on here, some people seem to think it's just me joking I have no life as in no hobbies and nothing I like to do, but that's not really what it means.

Well, it is kinda two meanings, and one of them is that I have no life yes, but not in that way. More like, for the longest time I imagine if I disappeared most people wouldn't notice at all. It's not really about not having things I like to do, but more like not having people that know anything about me. Basically, if a life is the things that people remember about you after you die, then there really were no signs of a life left behind in the past for me.

But the bigger reason for the name is that I used to keep disappearing from people. And thus show no signs of life to them, I'm sure especially some of my online friends from the past think I died at some point.

And the reason for this is kinda hard to explain, I always just described it as a paranoia but it probably is a bit more than that. I've started describing it as a kind of voice in my head recently, but that's not very accurate either cause I was very much aware that it is not an actual voice, more like an inner monologue that I have no control over. Either way, it kinda felt like there's another person in my head telling me things.

These things were not good things though, and it was kinda made worse (or perhaps even triggered) by my mom, who seems to have a worse version of this going on in her head and warned me from very young that kids at school are gonna pretend to be my friend and backstab me, or that strangers everywhere will be trying to kidnap me or beat me up. So her in this person in my head kinda backed up each other I guess, not that I ever told anyone about what was going on in my head. But the few times I did tell my mom I am worried about some ridiculous thing she'd pretty much tell me that yes I should be worried and careful, you never know.

So this led to me being very cautious to all my friend at school, rarely ever meeting them outside of school. Never sharing too much info about myself either, cause who knows what they might do with that info. And if I ever switched school or stopped seeing them in my classes, I'd never talk to them again. I called them friends but they were more like people I do hang out with at school, I did not miss them ever after changing schools or after school was over. It's just that if I hung out with noone at school, I would probably stand out a bit more cause I'd be sitting alone somewhere and people would notice. Plus we weren't really allowed any kind of entertainment I could use on my own, so it would be really boring.

And this went on for a very long time. After graduating highschool I said bye to the couple people I hung out with the past years and never contacted them again. Same after dropping out of college, well I only had 1 friend but haven't talked to him after the last year I still completed. I even blocked him on MSN cause I didn't want him to ask me where I was. It was cool not to be alone I guess, but the anxiety of people abusing my trust and backstabbing me one day was worse, if I didn't have to go to school/college anymore anyway I'd rather not have that anxiety anymore. And it didn't stop at college either, I've worked at 3 different places and never contacted the people who talked to me at work again after losing those jobs.

Online friends were a bit of a different case, and honestly when it was going ok was the best time of my life. And yeah this was the Myspace years. All my online friends were from far away countries, how could they possible hurt me or take advantage of me. And the thing is that they never did...I just stopped feeling safe eventually. Partially because of my mom again of course, I should have never told her I started making online friends. Cause yeah she warned me about stuff, she's never online so what would she know, but she said they could be from different countries than they say, or completely different people than they say. I didn't really believe her but it did plant the first seeds I guess.
And after a couple of years of making online friends, they stopped being excluded from my paranoia. I often wondered if they are secretly spying on me, trying to get information out of me while being in touch with people that know me in real life. If not that, I thought they secretly hate me and only keep talking to me out of politeness, but wished I would stop talking already. So I kept saying less, nothing I wouldn't want a spy to know and nothing I would think people would not enjoy talking about. And that just brought back the anxiety and discomfort of being social, so I disappeared to all of them one by one. Even after over a year of talking to someone, I'd just wake up one day and think about saying hi but couldn't anymore, like I had finally figured out that yes they were never on my side the whole time. Which is not the best feeling, but I mean, I can't imagine how they felt when they could suddenly no longer message me. It's not like I ever talked about these feelings, I couldn't let them know I was starting to see through their fake persona, so it must have come out of nowhere for them.

And I did feel alone after months of not talking to anyone, but I obviously couldn't contact my fake friends again as they obviously didn't like me, so I'd make new friends. And then it would happen again, they are also fake and spying on or hating me. So they get cut off too and I'd give up again for a few months, while wondering what I do to make everyone hate me. Which eventually simply made chatting too hard, I'd have to think sooo hard before every message because I got so scared of fucking up and writing something that makes them hate me.
So for about 15 years I never chatted with anyone online anymore except 1 person. Any new friends I made would be through emails. Which is not really all that popular, most people don't wanna write emails. But it was all I could do, cause I'd spend like 5 hours writing a letter as perfect as it could be so that I'd definitely not get hated. But this came with a problem of its own, I did not always have 5 hours of free time. So it sometimes took a bit too long before I could finish a reply, and then I'd worry that they're gonna expect an explanation for why I took so long. Which I felt I didn't have, so it would get too scary to write at all, and once again I'd show no signs of life.

Only a couple of months ago did I finally get better, and I understand now people won't hate me. But it's still very hard to talk in any way, not because of the anxiety but because of the lack of experience now. I don't know the social rules or the kinds of things people talk about or how they do it. I'm trying now though. It was great fun for a couple of years about 20 years ago, I really miss it.