Hey. Hi. I'm Icy and wow, I've been off this site for a while. So, I've been looking into avoidant personality disorder lately, and I'm relating to the symptoms enough that it's been concerning me. Like, I doubt anything will come of this, and I am at best skeptical of people who self-diagnose after a few online quizzes. So I'm dredging up feelings, projecting them onto anime characters, and trying to I guess make sense of them. Enjoy..?

Friends

Friends are hard. Lovino isn't sure how people pull off having more than perhaps five. He remembers the start of highschool, filled with prospective friendships. He used to sit in a circle with people who somehow knew everything about each other after a week. He could sense the block. He was just someone sitting there, they were friends. His jokes weren't funny, he was annoying them. So in they end he went back to Antonio. Antonio had new friends, but he was at least polite enough to talk to Lovino. It was a relief when they became proper friends again, a relief when he cautiously got to know Antonio's friends. He couldn't really consider them his friends until they started talking properly the next September, but at least he wasn't as lonely as he could have been if he stayed in the circle.

Feelings

He doesn't realise how recurring the thoughts are until he talks to people. Then he begins to notice. When he talks to people, the thoughts he never paid a lot of attention to reoccur. Hey, can I sit here. Good, you're letting me. What are you playing? Uh, uh, funny anecdote? But nothing's happened lately. God, I'm annoying them. I definitely am. Is my voice annoying? I think they're bored of my story. But I can't just sit here and be quiet, right? That'd be weird. The fear creeps up, too, when friends meet up without him. They talk about me, probably. About how annoying I am. Probably sick of me. And then the panic kicks in, because if he asks people outright if they hate him, he will look paranoid and like a bad friend.

Swings

His self-image used to swing more. He doesn't mind her looks really. Could be better, maybe. It's his personality he really has the problem with. His intelligence. He used to be distressed when he achieved anything below a 90% grade. He's desensitised now, really, with grades steadily slipping. A B is normal. He'll get by. But maths is all he really needs for a good college, and with his final exam turning out a C, all he sees in the mirror is an idiot with no future, and an annoying one at that. And with his friends getting straight As, calling the exam that made him dig his compass needle into the skin between her fingers just so he could focus on the sting rather than the empty hopelessness inside once he had finished easy, his school career looks bleak.

Love

He knows she'll never find it. He knows that if he was less isolated—if he lived in a better place, if he was pretty enough to be approached, if he didn't fear the crushing disappointment that would undoubtably come with rejection so much, if he had an ounce of confidence, it would certainly be different. And he knows that if he could somehow get to believe he was dateable, it wouldn't be nearly so hard, but it seems to just be how he is. But no, he is firmly resigned to dying alone.

Visits

He's not sure why the thought of hanging out with friends makes him wilt inside, because he has never regretted hanging out afterwards. He is fond of his friends, name-calling and putting them down aside. Really, the knowledge that he will look back on it with good memories of goofing off is the only thing that pushes him out the door. Still, he can't help but be happy to pull up an excuse to stay at home.

Cry

He's never had anxiety attacks. Worry, certainly. But nothing that can be described as an attack. No, he's one for keeping all his biggest problems right down inside, occasionally crumbling under the pressure. He should have spent exam week studying, but in the end it was all so fucking much and he couldn't focus properly and he spent his evenings lying on his bed and crying. Yes, lots of crying. When he was told he had to take the bus across the city to visit a friend? Crying in bed. He's not sure why the thought distressed him. The fear of getting lost, he supposed. And when he did get lost (all the suburban houses looked the damn same), the solution was deep breaths and slow blinks. He wonders if this breaking happens to others. He highly doubts his class spent an evening wondering if you cry so much you became dehydrated.

Watched

Is how he feels in public. He goes into internal panic mode when he sees someone from his school outside of school, when he sees people his own age. Rationally, he knows they don't give a fuck about him and won't remember him, but he still feels as though he can hear their thoughts. What a loser. Look at him. He acts like a kid.

Secret

He will carry his mistrustfulness and panics and tears and feelings of smallness to the grave. They are embarrassing, and he has gone so long without telling people it will definitely look like a cry for attention if he suddenly spills. He likes to think he looks put-together on the outside, but looking back he thinks it was done too well.

Disgnosis

It is Lovino's solid opinion that people who self-diagnose are attention-seeking millennials. Still, he can't help but slightly a little bit trust the psychology sites he visits. The thing is that it's hard to look at himself like someone else. It is called debilitating, and Lovino has come up with two separate options:

A) He is overreacting. It is normal to be suspicious of people and self-conscious as fuck. He wouldn't know, he talks mainly about memes. Deep conversations about feelings aren't something he's ever had.

B) He is, in fact, debilitated, but the Bad Thoughts ® crept up so slowly and subtly he has accepted them as a normal part of his personality.

He leans towards A), but he still can't help but doubt.

Oops a lazy ending.

Now, fun poll: Does Icy need help?

Reviews are good fun, thanks.