Dear Diary - April 2013

Hi, my name is Dan.

You might have known that already, since you are here on my blog, and it says so just down in the right-hand column there. I've never kept a diary, this blog's probably the closest equivalent, though I have jotted down the odd thought in Microsoft word on occasion, joining a large and growing list of all but forgotten word files on my laptop. I've kept pretty much every bit of schoolwork I've ever typed up and handed in by the way, all through my High School years.

This blog (and its sister blog, http://futuregeopoliticalscenarios.blogspot.com.au/ which is focused more on futurology than politics and life in general) is just a little hobby of mine, to jot down a few thoughts on politics or a little story from my life and send them off into cyberspace from time to time. Between them I've got about 7,000 hits in two years, so not much really, but I've found them fun to write up nonetheless.

I've talked a lot in my posts about politics and philosophy and so on, but today I'd like to examine psychology a little. More specifically the thinking of the person I know best, i.e. myself.

My life story (I'll try and keep this short I promise) starts off pretty normally. Eldest of three children in a middle class household down here in Melbourne, Australia. I went to two Primary Schools, and two High Schools. Years 7 and 8 I went to the local High School, but then I passed the exam to go to what is pretty much the best school in Melbourne, Melbourne High School, for the last four years of my schooling.

It's only really when I'm away from Melbourne High that I appreciate just how different an environment it is. The school's average ATAR is about 95, and very few kids score beneath 80. So hardly anyone in the school wasn't in at least the top fifth of all students in the state. About one in six of them actually score above 99. A lot of people think schools like that are only full of nerdy guys, but that really wasn't true. We generally performed really well in state and national sporting contests, even the jocks were smart. There were few kids in the school who, if the topic of conversation came round to something complicated like politics or philosophy, didn't have an opinion to offer. Even the average person in the law degree I'm doing now really isn't as knowledgeable as kids typically were at MHS.

Since it’s such an 'elite' school, it was very big on co-curricular activities. I was in the Army Cadets there for all four years. The first two were something to enjoy, the last two to endure. This is at the heart of what I'd like to talk about today.

I'll be honest here. For much of my High School years (I'd like to think not all) I've been something of a nerdy loner. I was the kid who, as early as grade 3, spent many a recess in a secluded corner of the schoolyard reading a book. Years 9 and 10 I did very little socializing. I had a few friends, but no one who I'd really describe as a 'best friend'. But several key events in year 11 caused me to gradually change my behavior  to actually try and better myself when it came to my social health.

The key one, I suppose, occurred at the end of year 10 at a cadet promotions camp. Now let me be clear here, the Australian Army Cadets are about as far from a ‘hardcore’ organisation as it is possible to imagine. We never even got to fire a gun or anything! It’s just the boy scouts in Khaki. But as far as High School goes, I suppose they’re a pretty pressuring environment, and sometimes very competitive.

Of the four years I spent at MHS, maybe four months in total was spent on various cadet activities, so they’re home to many of my most vivid memories and important experiences from High School. I went on nearly every camp, course and parade and so on. We had activities every week on Monday afternoons and about half a dozen camps a year, plus a fair number of parades. The first two years all of the cadets were pretty much even in rank, but at the end of year 10 things start to get a bit serious, as how you’re promoted at the start of year 11 pretty much determines your role in the unit for your last two years.

In short, I bombed miserably on that one camp. In terms of social interaction I quite utterly imploded. Finally faced with an actual selection pressure the nerdy loner, who’d previously fit in quite well and made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in charisma, quickly found himself at the bottom of the social pecking order. Leaders get promoted, not followers.

I was pretty much the only kid in my year level who wasn’t promoted that year. I’d made Lance Corporal in year 10, but everyone who’d tried to had succeeded at that. Now a simple case of a 16 year old kid not being promoted in the army cadets may not exactly sound like Armageddon, but in my life its always been quite a significant event. I've barely ever failed at something so badly before. Perhaps my standards for myself are way too high? There is a background to all this I need to cover.

Social anxiety may just be the most infuriating thing in the whole world. I’m starting to become convinced of that. In terms of aggravation it’s really on a whole other level to anything else. It’s simply just not like typical setbacks, like when you stub your toe while walking or stuff up something important like an exam or a job interview, its way beyond that. It can be soul-crushingly frustrating. The knowledge that you simply can’t make friends with people, that your opinions on things will always be universally dismissed as the blabbering of someone without any social standing, that you are so fundamentally dislike-able somehow, can absolutely destroy you, it can drive you to madness.

I f*cking hated it! And to make matters worse it was a double-edged sword. I usually hated being around other people, they drove me up the wall whether they were ignoring or bullying me (though the former is generally less insufferable) but the other half of it is that I hated myself even more. I just couldn’t bring myself to say that it was anyone else’s fault but myself. I’m the one who’s somehow in the wrong, I’m the one who can’t fit in, and it’s my fault. I hated myself for it.

Do you know how mind-numbingly boring a lack of kind human contact can be? Especially when the alternative, of going out and socialising with people, is a prospect so terrifying, so rare and so likely to end badly, as it always does, that you start sweating just thinking about it?

For a long time it made me, as I’ve long thought of it, as ‘that guy’. That guy nobody likes. You know him, there’s always one in every social group. That one kid in class who people always try and avoid sitting next to, the one who is never invited to anything, the one who is bullied for the slightest social mishap, made even more frequent by the maddening double standards people have. Not only is ‘that guy’ so socially inept, he can never be socially adept. Even when he acts just like everyone else, trying hard to fit it, there seems to be some kind of unspoken agreement among everyone else not to let the socially retarded kid gain an inch of popularity. He’s the one everyone’s making fun of, and that’s the way things are going to stay. Nobody else wants to find themselves as the butt of all jokes, it’s a position that, once you’ve sidled into it in the first five minutes of meeting a new social group, you probably have for life. That’s the most exasperating part of all.

As year 11 (the year was 2010 by the way) dragged on, I became less and less happy at how events had unfolded and the state of my (non-existent) social life. I’d always thought of myself as not being particularly high in the social pecking order, but dead last? I wouldn't dream of blaming anyone else for this calamity of course. It was my fault; I accepted the burden of trying to improve myself. But how? What was I doing wrong?

I talked too much, that was an early conclusion. It really wasn't until this late in my life that I realised just how much of a loudmouth smart-ass I’d always been. My opinion was always the most important! I liked my things! Others just didn't understand how great the stuff I liked was! I resolved to talk less, and to listen to others more, and most importantly, to not talk first as often as possible.

One key thing I took the initiative on was to finally create a Facebook account. People often deride social networking as being a hindrance on ‘real relationships’ but I digress. For me it’s been a godsend. I’d have next to no social life without it. By about halfway through year 11 I was starting to change my behavior  but old pecking orders die hard. I was trying to be less self-absorbed, to emphasise with others more. But people didn't yet seem to be treating me any differently. I needed a chance to prove to myself that I really had changed, that I could change. Luckily such an opportunity was not long in presenting itself.

In July 2010 the senior cadets had another promotion course. This one wasn’t directly to be followed by people getting promoted, but it was a prerequisite for anyone seeking a higher position in year 12. It went for nine days and was at Puckapunyal, a large army base in central Victoria. Apart from the half dozen other MHS kids doing it, no one there would know my previous self at all. It was time to put the new and improved Dan to the test.

As far as socialising goes, I don’t think I’ve ever had a more stressful week. Doing drill routines, sitting through boring lessons, being rated on various aspects of leadership. It was touch and go for a while but, to make a long story short, I’m quite sure I succeeded. I was quietly overjoyed at this. Now what had been my goal exactly?

To not be ‘that guy’.

Many a time I’d been ‘that guy’, but, not, this, time! Of the forty odd cadets in this group, there were maybe three or four who after the first couple of days had been firmly labelled as one of ‘those guys’, the unpopular guys. Gee, bullying can occur quick can’t it? But as for me, I just kept my head down, tried not to say too much, and got on with the coursework. I think I did quite well actually, maybe just a few spots off being dux, since the one guy who I was quite sure had done better than me did end up being the dux. I’m quite sure that if you asked most of the kids in that course today who they remember from it, that ‘those guys’ would be recalled quite often for all the wrong reasons. But not me! I gloried in my newborn power to fit it! In my newfound mediocrity, my anonymity!

I returned to MHS the next week with newfound confidence. From here the only way to go was up.

The first real social event I went on since I first went to MHS happened a few weeks later in august (as in something completely separate from school, and I had been going there for 2 and 1/2 years by now). It was nothing too exciting (well, not unless you’re as mad a politics nerd as I am). I went to a mate’s house with a few others and the four of us followed the 2010 Australian Federal election live all night. I even had a bet with one of them over the outcome (there was a hung parliament for about a month, but then the independents swung to Labor and I got my $10 a few weeks later).

This was a huge step forwards for me. The simple act of going to a friend’s house was something I’d hardly done since primary school. The next big step happened in October.

Now as I hadn’t been promoted in cadets that year, I’d gone into the ‘Advanced Training Squad’ of the unit at the start of the year. A few of the others were year 11’s who’d simply never bothered with a promotion camp, or had come into the school later, in year 10 instead of year 9. A few were year 12’s in a similar position. That year had, I’ll admit, some of the best moments of my whole time in cadets. The seven of us (five guys, two girls by the way) would basically go out by ourselves on camps and do pretty much whatever we pleased. We made huge bonfires, snuck up on the junior cadets at night and drew on their sleeping mats with markers, played ‘I have never’ around the fire (to see who was still a virgin for instance, six out of seven of us were) I've never had such chemistry with a group of people before or since. Admittedly I was still made fun of a lot, but so was pretty much everyone else. That’s what made things so much fun, though I must admit I still suffered from nerves even around them. It’s taken me a long time to get over the worst effects of social phobia.

So anyway, that October one of the group invited me to her 18^th birthday party. It was the first of a dozen or so house parties (and a few dozen other social events) I've been to over the past two years. Admittedly the rate of socialising is still fairly slow, many people I know seem to go out much more often, but it’s definitely something and I've appreciated every one of these experiences, ever present social phobia aside. I would sincerely like to thank the following people for inviting me to their house at one point or another. Cameron, Ben, Killian, Michael, Benji, Sophie, Ryan, Harry, Jesse, Alston, Ella, Luella and Tom. I think that’s everyone? Thank you all. One of the things I've learned over the years is that people need room to mature, you all helped give me that space; I feel I've made a lot of progress in a lot of areas when it comes to befriending people.

Since I graduated in 2011, things have slowed down a little. I live on the other side of Melbourne to MHS, so travelling to friends houses usually takes a few hours by train, and sleeping over is something of a necessity in most cases. Consequently no one from my year level at MHS goes to my current uni. I've had to build up a new friendship group from scratch, but I am delighted to see that so far, I have basically fit in with the people I've met there. I also got a part-time job after I finished High School, its just delivering pizzas, but its a convenient and fairly easy job. My efforts at finding another one have come to nought, despite handing out nearly a hundred resumes over the past few months. I would like to dispense this piece of advise, getting a job is great for your social skills and self-confidence! Plus, moneyss!!!

I vowed that the long years of isolation when I first arrived at MHS would never be repeated, no matter where I ended up, and so far I’ve stuck with that promise. A few other things. Being over 18 can make quite a big difference to your life. Being about to drive, get into bars and buy alcohol really can make a big difference. If you’re a depressed young kid out there struggling to improve your lot, then I’d like to give you this advise in a nutshell. Be patient, try to relax, and try to better yourself as time goes on. Things can get better! Despite these improvements, I do still feel immensely frustrated sometimes, but at least I’m not crying myself to sleep as I used to do quite a lot. Sometimes I just feel like running outside and screaming at the world, (and sometimes I do).