Plurk paste

it's not that i dislike being included in things but often people just kinda throw me into their plans w/o bothering to confirm if i'm willing or able. the unexpectedness of it mixed with the feeling of my consent being disregarded, even if i were going to say "yes" in the first place, fucks me up more than i'd like to admit ☠

i know that all i have to do is speak up and decline, and i can do that well enough on a decent day, but on not-so-decent days it's frustrating and difficult. by default i don't volunteer information unless asked. over the years, i've managed to override my default and learn how to determine what's relevant to say and offer that information, but of course it takes energy to override.
i have to actively minimize stimulus and my interactions with people who i don't communicate well with (or whom i perceive that to be the case, which is another whole can of worms for another day) to give myself insurance for bad days, to make sure it doesn't escalate into bad weeks or even bad months. i think i'm much better at this now, although learning how to do this has taken a lot of time.

in the end it's much easier to just establish from the get-go that i'm asocial and leave it at that, so that my interactions and communication lines are kept at their bare minimum and reserved primarily for trusted individuals. i do lament over the fact that this limits what i'm able to do and initiate and experience, but the tradeoff is worth it for now.

i could always just explain my circumstances to people... well, if someone were to ask me, i would.
but i dunno, i think it's frequently underestimated how hard it can be to get people to sympathize with issues, feelings, and preferences that they don't personally have. and this goes both ways, of course. the exasperation and unintentional lack of consideration is mutual! that's what makes this sort of thing so... tricky.

it's not even all that severe a problem, and it's easy to appease me, all i'm asking for is to be asked and for my responses to be taken as-is. and i do ask to be asked, or try to express a need for it, and i extend that to others. but it's simply inefficient to go through all these hoops for every single person, for every single stranger.

i guess what i'm really trying to get at is to describe this sort of nuance in communication, it's incredibly simple and yet frequently makes me trip. there's a disconnect, i think, between what i expect requires clarification and what actually does/doesn't.