Allow me to ask of you, rare reader, to entertain my indulgence concerning the floridly lit labyrinths of my neuroses. I have to admit that they will probably leave you feeling the worse for having entertained my favor, however their is a slight chance that wading through the rubbled drivel of confusing yet terrifying visions and emotional fears will benefit you in identifying and isolating some of your own. It is for that outside chance, the three cherries in the slot machine of writing, that I continue instead of dispensing with the activity and the awkward formalities necessary in this instance.

I find myself often at uncommon odds with persons I meet who lie on the edge of my limited social circle. From such an egotistical perspective, it should be no wonder that I am at odds with them, however being introduced to a friend's cousin who I will probably never see again leaves me with an aloofness and subtle thin hatred for having to construct a tailor-made set of impressions for a person who I will never or rarely see again. I feel a deep pointlessness during the brief meetings, followed by an empty sort of apathy; in short, a feeling akin to watching the Tyra Banks show or the accomplishment of beating a terrible video game. It feels mechanical, unnecessary, and like none of it should have happened. It wouldn't be frustrating if the spontaneous took flight on our words and nestled on the dinner table before us in the display of peacock-like beauty, but mostly we discover what each other does for a living and if one of us has a new truck, girl, or disease. It is kind of like watching commercials, except instead of advertising the benefits of new products, these conversations reflect advertisements for the self.

This is not to say that human interaction isn't valuable. These meetings and strained encounters are the very foundation on which people begin to know each other, though it remains a rare experience for me to consider myself worth knowing or the other person. Immediately my social radar designates who is useful, threatening, dissimilar, comatose, or volatile. In some situations, when a person who could be described as a character is encountered, I feel an immediate distaste permeate my mouth followed by a desire to leave into the kitchen for a glass of wine.

In my instance, this could be caused by the gaping chasm created by establishing a false parity between actual and literary life. Writers and characters in books hold so much more fascination for me; I'd rather be listening to Rashkolnikov than mild mannered conformity masters, to an obtuse Marcuse than an acute hypochondriac. Another important facet of the problem involves the way we interpret the people who populate books versus the people who populate the world, a manner in which I usually fail to ascribe to unless I'm benevolently drunk or suitably bored. Protagonists in books have to be inherently interesting to survive the submission process in writing, but people in real life don't have to meet this qualification in order to stay alive, more or less fortunately. Plus, in real life, everybody is their own protagonist, driving their own narratives, which sometimes can make the problem of overpopulation all the more frustrating when it means dealing with an army of thematically scattered yet self-interested and effacing consciousnesses. Like reading a book written by a hundred different authors, life turns out to be brilliantly varied or catatonically confusing, depending on the page you find yourself experiencing.

Beyond the analytical pseudo critical phenomenon of meeting people, there is the somewhat more realist problem I have with trusting people. Some of the worst people I have ever encountered are the ones who insist on fulfilling the duties of their employment without imagination or compassion. But this isn't really worth getting into, as it seems everybody hates those people except for those people themselves, whoever they are. May they not be people close to you or me, is all I can hope to wish for. And yet, their is a note of empathy left in my slow sadness that would extend warmth towards these folks, for whom perhaps experience and necessity has dictated a loss of sensitivity to the world of dreams and kindness. Yet, these still are the people who have ruined my faith in trust, and not the obviously evil or malignant. The latter can generally be known for what they are avoided, while the former have an unfortunate tendency for appearing in institutions such as business, government, education, and medicine. Their basic humanity demands our human trust, yet their actions often demand that we ally ourselves with an odious bureaucracy if we are wont to recognize their humanity.

Lastly, their are my own foibles, which amount to stalling like a car on railroad tracks during certain social interactions. My thoughts leave me like a frightened driver hearing the oncoming train, and I'll sit their wincing invisiblely before the inevitable disaster happens. I have a penchant for encountering multiple trains somehow, those extroverted super-personalities engineered by the undiagnosed mad socialites of the world who cajole me into the third world of introversion until I gain enough energy to propel myself to an empty room or the outdoors after creating a meager excuse. Alternatively, their are rareperiods of time where I am that super-personality, crackling coal in the furnace while shining my mono-headlight down on some poor waifish fop who had the bad fortune to find me billowing with intensity.

What I don't understand, given the relative lack of solutions for anything mentioned, is how ordinary people are expected to form communities of emotion and transcend the necessity of business and familial interactions when the minor problems I have mentioned foster such a strongly negative experience. I guess the answer for me is to just deal with socially awkward situations that I should have mastered in high school. But what is the answer for an auto-mechanic getting fired by a boss he spent thirty years pretending to like, only to find out that unemployment is just around the corner? What is the answer for the single mother struggling with a waitressing position and a young mouth to feed? What is the solution for the family bombarded by medical bills? Are these people supposed to contain their desperate situations and unobserved tragedies in favor of social cohesion? Are they supposed to hide who they are, or embarrass themselves with revelations about their lives? This is why I fear strangers, why I don't trust them; because of my own unique problems that do not translate, because of the unnecessary suffering involved in pretending happiness before the face of someone you haven't an idea of how to care about, and because of the artless ways people react when you are at your most genuine.