Nothing compares to the doom I feel being a schizoid. At least nothing that I know of. It’s like there’s an unholy gap between what I am like and what a normal human being is supposed to be. Something that doesn’t allow me to experience any feeling directly, but rather, by proxy – namely, by fantasizing about it. If I get to experience something directly, if I am alone, I feel nothing. If I am with others, I feel oppressed by their presence. I can pretend to be one of them, oh yes I can, but not for long. I only feel by fantasizing: my default mental process – a substitute for thinking.

Sounds complicated? What am I talking about here? Something very real, my friend. My quest in this article is to make you, someone sane who can relate to some of my schizoid traits, understand what it is like to be schizoid. I will show you the whole picture, and maybe allow you to empathize with me. Let’s do it for science, shall we?

One of the core symptoms of the Schizoid Personality Disorder (SDP) is that I cannot be around people for long. Not even people I deeply and truly care about. There is something icky about them – something that doesn’t allow me to enjoy their presence for an extended amount of time. I need to be alone for a while after socializing until my batteries recharge and I am once again able to do so.

This means that sharing with others – the reason humanity exists, thrives, and keeps going – is something I will never truly know about. Not because I cannot partake in it, but because I cannot engage in it. For me, socializing is a chore. I don’t want to do it, I will never truly enjoy it- I can only pretend to. Thus, the most fulfilling part of the human experience is locked away from me.

The one sad thing that actually brings joy to me is fantasizing. I believe this is the default mode of thought of a schizoid, as a substitute to regular thinking. This is something essential to the disorder as it affects both the superficial and the profound. Let me illustrate this statement with an example:

I like a girl. I know we like each other. An opportunity arises in which we could kiss. I go ahead and do that, but it feels like a chore, like something unpleasant that I have to go through. Afterwards, I feel diasspointed with the experience, even though I truly like this girl. Why?

I previously fantasized with fully fleshed-out details about the moment in which I would kiss her, embrace her with my arms, and caress her beautiful hair. I imagined my actions every step of the way; how I would talk her into being in the mood for kissing how she would respond to that, how it would end up happening. I also imagined her being joyous about it, and partaking in it with as much intensity as me. She would kiss me back, caress my neck to end up embracing me, all the while she closes her eyes and her cheeks light up. Every. Single. Detail.

Once I actually go and do it, it never is like I fantasized about. People are unpredictable and never act as I would like them to, so I end up terribly disappointed every time. I never get what I want, as what I want is something I created in my head and can NEVER become a reality.

This made me realize that people must fantasize a lot less and with much less detail than I do. This means that their satisfaction will be assured, as their projected ideal is much simpler in nature and does not differ as much from what they actually obtain in life. Of course there are disappointments, but they aren’t something to kill yourself over, right?

Mine feel like they are.

Remember how I said that fantasy was the default mode of thought? I fantasize about the smallest things. About how it will be to wake up tomorrow. About how my interaction with the cashier will be once I go and buy something at the grocery. About every think that a normal human being would think about. This means that I get disappointed EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I am thus permanently saddened because of the immense gap between reality and my fantasies.

Let me pull another example from the hat: doing something new is both terrifying and boring at the same time. Why? It’s terrifying because you know how human nature differs from what you fantasized about in your head. You know stuff won’t be as you want it to be, causing anxiety. On the other hand, because you have already fully fantasized about it – even more so since it’s something new – once you get how this new thing works, it more or less fits one of the many fantasies you had previously imagined. This means your learning curve is incredibly fast, but that you get bored just as fast, as you flesh out the details you couldn’t think of on your own. You don’t need real experience, you already experienced many outcomes in your head and pick the closest one to reality to get an edge on things.

Let me warn you though: this isn’t as good as it sounds. You can never become a professional at something. You will fantasize about the details that you haven’t yet mastered in, let’s say, a craft or a videogame, and you will thus not pursue them. Let’s say I want to master a guitar song: once I more or less know how to fully play it, I don’t see the point in perfecting the details that I have not yet fully mastered. Let’s add that there’s a difficult solo that I cannot perform 100% correctly. I can fantasize about me doing it correctly, since I don’t have to perform for others (remember? I hate socializing), so I gratify and spoil myself mentally as to not actually achieve that level of guitar playing. Why bother?

If I were to actually perfect my craft though, I would sabotage my efforts by procrastinating, as it would end up being a very unpleasant and tedious experience for me. If I get through it, the minor details that I might have not been able to fantasize about would make enough of a difference for me to say “shit, that was totally worth it!” Thus, nothing is worth it once I can fantasize the outcome with only a very minor error margin.

This cripples me pursuing any hobby, job or passion. This cripples my love life, as once I get to truly know someone, I lose interest in the fine details, because fuck it, I can figure them out. The tragic thing here, is that there is always this minor error margin, this “what if” question: “What if I had pursued this thing to the very end?”. A what if that my fantasies quickly squelch.

Now is the part in which you ask me to stop acting this way, for my own sanity and happiness. And my answer comes in the form of an annoying question; if I have come out with this amazing fleshed out diagnosis of my own psyche and its shortcomings, don’t you think I wouldn’t have already done something about it? Knowing that fantasizing about a solution won’t manifest it in reality?

As I said before, fantasy is my default mode of thought. I am permanently fantasizing about stuff. It’s invasive; I can engage you in a conversation and fantasize about other stuff simultaneously. I truly cannot control it. As I write these words I sometimes fantasize about you reading it and agreeing with what I have to say, nodding with your head as you keep scrolling down this page. Note how this fantasy didn’t account for people in their mobile or tablet devices, but hey, I quickly thought of that too, right?

Fantasies kill any joy I could get from the world. Getting rid of them and consciously reducing their presence in my mind is the only thing that helps, yet still, my subconscious is quicker than my ability to veto my imagination, so it’s an uphill battle. Yet, there are things in which fantasy is very useful. It is so in its less invasive form: imagination. Thus, creating stories and art in general is very fulfilling if one has the skill to accurately project one’s vision in a certain medium, such as a piece of paper, a blog post or a guitar fretboard. At least there are some things that I can do to help myself and provide some value to others, if I bring myself to sharing my creations with you, the viewer. A necessary evil for me, since I have to get money somehow to survive.

Yet, the rest of aspects from my life are still severely crippled and permanently tainted by disappointment, sadness and boredom, as they involve others – those icky others, who never do what I want them to (and what often would be better for them). This causes me to feel an immense boredom towards life: tedium, a better term for such a feeling.

I’ll leave you with this amazing translation from Charles Baudelaire’s “To the Reader” by Robert Lowell:

To the Reader

Infatuation, sadism, lust, avarice

possess our souls and drain the body’s force;

we spoonfeed our adorable remorse,

like whores or beggars nourishing their lice.

Our sins are mulish, our confessions lies;

we play to the grandstand with our promises,

we pray for tears to wash our filthiness;

importantly pissing hogwash through our styes.

The devil, watching by our sickbeds, hissed

old smut and folk-songs to our soul, until

the soft and precious metal of our will

boiled off in vapor for this scientist.

Each day his flattery makes us eat a toad,

and each step forward is a step to hell,

unmoved, through previous corpses and their smell

asphyxiate our progress on this road.

Like the poor lush who cannot satisfy,

we try to force our sex with counterfeits,

die drooling on the deliquescent tits,

mouthing the rotten orange we suck dry.

Gangs of demons are boozing in our brain —

ranked, swarming, like a million warrior-ants,

they drown and choke the cistern of our wants;

each time we breathe, we tear our lungs with pain.

If poison, arson, sex, narcotics, knives

have not yet ruined us and stitched their quick,

loud patterns on the canvas of our lives,

it is because our souls are still too sick.

Among the vermin, jackals, panthers, lice,

gorillas and tarantulas that suck

and snatch and scratch and defecate and fuck

in the disorderly circus of our vice,

there’s one more ugly and abortive birth.

It makes no gestures, never beats its breast,

yet it would murder for a moment’s rest,

and willingly annihilate the earth.

It’s BOREDOM. Tears have glued its eyes together.

You know it well, my Reader. This obscene

beast chain-smokes yawning for the guillotine —

you — hypocrite Reader — my double — my brother!

— Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)