A Realization About Myself And How I Interact With Some Of The Less Social People I Know

Ever known somebody who has gone through a ton of adversity and, instead of feeling like a victorious warrior for having persevered and made it through the rough shite, has decided to just step back from society and shut out the world?

I seem to know an unusually high number of these types. I refer to them as isolationist.

I'm not sure why I know these people - is it due to me being drawn to the challenge of establishing a relationship with people who have ostensibly given up on establishing relationships? Or is it due to the fact that I appear approachable to those types of people and they find themselves irresistibly drawn to me?

Whatever the case, it's a weird dealio knowing isolationist.

This past Christmas eve I considered making an effort to get a few of the isolationist people who live close to me together for a small party, just a little gathering of like-minded (or should that be "like-neurotic?") souls to share in a little bit of the holiday festivities.

No doubt my sudden altruism was motivated by what I had seen on the drive in to work that morning. I wanted to reach  out to the isolationist I knew and be all cheery and merry.

So I drew up a list of 5 people I consider isolationist. To be clear, the people I consider isolationist share the following behaviors:

1) Go from home to work to home without ever making detours - either before work such as meeting friends for breakfast, or after work such as meeting friends for social activities of any type - bowling, trivia night at a bar/pub, etc. 

2) Do almost all of their shopping late at night. Stores that are open 24 hours a day make their money from people such as this.

3) Rarely go out for reasons most people do - like concerts, movies, plays, etc.

4) If they do go out to a public (or even private) gathering, they tend to stay away from anybody they don't know, and they tend to stay away from the areas where the majority of the other people are (i.e., hiding in the kitchen at parties). 

5) Without exception, all of them have related to me a reason why they do not like to leave their respective homes, and without exception all of those reasons have involved being hurt emotionally by someone they were in a relationship with.

I'm certain that most of those traits are part of an avoidance personality disorder.

The argument could be made that those people might just be introverts, but I know introverts - artists and writers who need to be alone in order to enjoy life. They will go out in public though, and they will interact with people on a daily basis without looking like it's a painful or frightening experience. 

However, these 5 people I know, they chose to be alone not because it's conducive to being particularly productive in an endeavour, artistic or otherwise.

They all seem to chose to be alone because they have allowed themselves to believe there is nothing that can be gained by being around people, and they all seem to be intimidated by the world.

They allow fear to dictate their existence.

Then it occurred to me that it was not my place to attempt to change how people chose to live their lives, and that if they wanted to be alone at Christmas (and all other times for that matter) that was their business, not mine.

So I decided instead to go to a fav local hangout and buy a round for everybody who was at the bar. We toasted, the few of us in the place on the day before Christmas, to peace on earth to men of goodwill.

Then I went home and exchanged gifts with my friends and neighbors. It was great.  

Here it is, three weeks later...I related my little plan for an isolationist Christmas party to 2 of the 5 people on the list I had drawn up. The reaction?

Almost word for word from both of them, "That sounds like it would have been cool, let's do that next year."

Hah!