Processing... Embarrassment
Last night I went to see an orchestra for the anime for a game I play. It was great. I discovered that live music could make a part of your sould rumble. It's great. Then there was performance from a guest. She had great vocal range and control. But then it was getting late, and I wanted to wake up early the next day, for habit's sake. So I went home at the intermission. I got to bed on time.
Except, I could not sleep. At midnight, I gave up. I know exactly what's wrong.
During the wait, I sat next to a very pretty girl. I struck up a conversation, using a very strange question. She looked at me like a worm and declined to comment. The whole thing happened in 5 seconds. But I think I had let it rule over my psyche for the rest of that evening.
I successfully survived 12 years in the Vietnamese education system. In the process, I also managed to be rejected by girls my age at least 4 times. Sometimes, such memory bubble up and bother me. They remind me of a part of me that is not whole. I am not sociable person. Or for this particular case, not a socially desirable person. I have never had a girlfriend. I have few friends. And since I am not a psychopath, that does bother me, though I never show it externally (like everyone else like that).
I know I have been trying to compensate for that. To excel in study, in work. But a compensation is not the same as the thing you are trying to compensate for. It's like an urchin thorn. When seamen get stung by an urchin, they can not pull the thorns out because they will tear the flesh with them. Instead, they plunged a knife into it, breaking the thorns up. The body can dissolve the thorns gradually. But some pieces remain the rest of their life. I was told this story a few years ago. The factfulness was dubious. But it struck a chord. The non-social part of me will always be there and haunt me.
Lying in bed, I imagined what different authors I knew would say. They would laud me for taking the courage after so long, but reprimand me for letting a thought hold myself captive for so long, for not doing the right thing though knowing what it is I must do. My thoughts drifted to Jordan Peterson. I am reading him right now. He is not an insane person like on YouTube. His writing is like an orthodox preacher. He referenced The Bible all the time, together with Russian classics such as Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. Two things particularly stood out. One is "Memory exists so that you can learn from the past to apply for the future, not to preserve the past pristinely". What do I need to learn? Apparently, more "normal" social behavior. That's the other one "Be precise in your speech". I could have asked to take a picture of her (Google cosplay). That could lead nicely to conversation about her status as player in the game we play. That's actually what I want to know at the time (now I feel even more like a dork - her game level is the thing that I actually want to know when I meet a pretty girl).
Then I remembered something else. "If something bothers you, write it down on paper". I actually already did that. One time on the bus home with my notebook. One time without pen and paper. But I still lost (some) sleep over this matter. So maybe type it out and throw it into the void (or the mouth) of a Bear would help. At least, I hope so.