I struggle to talk to people. It is not that I have nothing to say. I just cannot predict how my sentences arrive. I say one thing, and it does something else.
Something goes wrong in a conversation. I do not always know what. A word lands differently than I meant it. Or I answer a question more precisely than it was asked. Or I say something true at the wrong moment.
Normally this is the moment where repair happens. One person says that hurt, the other says I did not mean it that way, and it goes on. That is how it is supposed to work.
With me, the person is instead just gone. Not gradually. Blocked, everywhere, at once, without a sentence of explanation. The conversation is not ended, it is deleted.
Day one, evening: “How was your day?” Next morning: “good”. Late morning: “Everything ok?” – “yes”. Midday: “I thought about it and came to the conclusion that we are not compatible and therefore I do not want to see you any more.”
An ordinary exchange across two days, then the end of it, with nothing in between. No name or identifying detail is shown.
For years I tried to find the right setting. When I am warm, it is too much, too intense. When I hold back, I am cold. When I am direct, I am rude. When I ask what went wrong, the question itself is read as an accusation. Every correction points the opposite way from the last one. At some point I understood it was never about the setting.
I do not think this is about being disliked. Leaving has just become very easy, and repair has not. Blocking takes one second, needs no explanation, and it is total. There is no version of it that leaves a door open.
For most people that costs little, because most of their conversations do not go wrong in the first place. Mine go wrong more often, so I would need repair more often. And repair is the part that no longer exists.
The result is not just loneliness. Every exchange carries a risk I cannot do anything about, and nothing good I have built up carries over to the next one. A lot of beginnings, and nothing that continues.
I write this down because it is part of the record.