I feel lonely. Maybe it’s just a mood swing. After all, I don’t have any more or less friends and acquaintances as compared to yesterday. Different emotions trigger different thoughts, so I am writing down my present thoughts lest I forget them after I cheer up.

I suspect that it is a common human condition to have only a few really good friends. Do these people ever feel lonely?

I realise that I have a lot of reservations even with people whom I consider as my good friends. I worry that those whom I treat as my good friends do not treat me as such. I worry that they are not interested to hear what I say. I worry that talking about my weaknesses would be perceived as a means of garnering sympathy and attention. I worry that I would impose too much on them and become an inconvenience. I dare not reveal my fears and desires to anyone – those are the darnest of all things to talk about.

Ultimately, this means that there is nobody who understands me. I can’t blame anyone for that, because I don’t allow anyone to.

I hope that things can change. The above fears arise from my thoughts which appear reasonable, but are in fact backed by a fear or reluctance to trust people. As I have read, trust is a feeling that you get when you look at certain people in the eye. Supposedly, once you trust someone, you don’t think about how the person might harm you, which can be positively reinforcing. When you fully trust someone, you don’t think so much.

At the same time, trust is a faith not based on any reason, and I can’t just will myself to trust someone I don’t. To simulate trust, I tried to consciously think less when I interact with people. It isn’t easy doing something that isn’t justified and you don’t feel particularly passionate about, but it gets less uncomfortable with practice (perhaps because the good or bad outcomes of these irrational and dispassionate choices reinforce behaviour, making some choices less dispassionate over time). With more practice doing irrational stuff that I don’t feel for, I think it would become easier for me to talk to people. After all, so much of my daily speech consist of stuff I don’t believe and I don’t feel for.

Sometimes I’m envious of people who like to talk about soccer, cars, food and travel. It seems a lot easier for them to talk, and there seems to be so much to say. They don’t need to work hard to, y’know, just hang around with a bunch of guys and enjoy. While I didn’t need to work that hard for my studies, I wonder if that would actually make that much of a difference to my life in the long run if I can’t enjoy talking to most people.

Perhaps, finding a good friend is so important, that it is worth sacrificing a few acquaintances for.

(Looking on the bright side, I don’t need to have people around to be happy either. It’s just that being alone makes being moody that much worse.)

And why am I telling you all these? Because if I only talked to people I trust, I would have nobody to talk to.

Wow this is such an emo post. So emo that I might just delete it when I cheer up, erasing this part of my existence. Oh well. Xin yang caa 25-08 signs off now.