On Being Disliked

I am universally disliked. Here’s how it feels.

For as long as I can remember, I have been mocked, abused, treated like shit, laughed at, not taken seriously, and it hurts.

It hurts all the time. The ache never leaves. These days, of course, I know why I am disliked, and I guess I will die in peace because I do know that. For most of my life, it confused me and agonized me, and I wept tears — buckets of them — every night.

Being disliked saps your belief in your ability to be accepted. Strangely, I never had an issue with confidence in my ability to do anything. I always did things well, but I also never compared myself to others or sought reward for what I did, so there was no jealousy, and no expectation from others.

But being disliked has impaired me economically — in every respect. And it has shattered my life. I now expect to be disliked. I would never try for a relationship. I would never try to be friends. I just know that, sooner or later, I would be disliked.

At work, although I was often a top performer, I would be picked on, and I’m incredibly sensitive. If you tell me I shouldn’t take a piece of cake, I would starve rather than take a piece of cake. If you tell me I’m not allowed to enter a competition, I will obey you blindly. If you tell me that I’m not good enough to apply for a job, I won’t.

It took me a lifetime to realize that it wasn’t true — that I was unwanted competition, and that people were just trying to get me out of the way. When people dislike you, they don’t want what’s best for you.

It doesn’t help that I have interests in unpopular subjects. I tend to be more intellectual. I don’t do social. Tests show me continually as an INTJ. So I’m an introverted systems person.

I used to love people. They interested me above all things. They just didn’t like me as much as I liked them. In fact, they didn’t like me at all.

Worse, I have never known what it feels like to be liked or loved. That’s wrong of me, because I know that my daughter and my sister loves me.

But nobody else does.

There came a point in my life where I simply didn’t care. More, I got angry because I used to be such a gracious, refined, kind person. But it just made me a victim, and while others could do the same thing and be applauded, if I tried it, I would be shouted down.

I kept asking psychologists why it was that other people could say and do things, but if I said and did the same thing, I was punished. I was punished frequently. That’s another thing that happens when you are disliked.

So why am I disliked?

I suppose Aspergers (being autistic) is part of it. I just didn’t notice people. So I never said hello or goodbye or please or thank you. Part of that was also that I was never taught anything by my parents and I grew up in isolation. I simply was, I suppose, to some extent, not socialized.

But I was never a mean person or a spiteful person or an unkind person, and I was always a generous person.

Being disliked hurts.

It hurts badly.

I don’t show it, of course. I just carry on. And that somehow seems to make people dislike you more. And they try to hurt you more.

It has made me a loner, a person who shuns company, and the more I shun company, the lonelier and more miserable I become.

Yet there are things about people that frighten me. It’s when I meet them and they start gossiping about other people. I can never trust that person. I know that the moment my back is turned, they will start gossiping about me. And so it is.

I see the result of that gossip.

On day one, I smile at someone. We start talking. And we establish a link. And then, the next day, for no reason I can think of, they completely avoid me, and another one bites the dust.

That’s what gossip does.

One person dislikes you because you didn’t say hello. They are offended. They imagine all sorts of things about you, and they pass that off as truth.

Eventually I lost all trust in people. I have no more trust in humanity.

It hurts me physically to be so disliked. My bones, my heart, and my tummy physically ache from it. I have learnt to live with it.

I accept it now, and I guess I can be open about it now. I have nothing more to lose.

Just wanted you to know that if you dislike someone because they offended you in some way, maybe they’re autistic. Maybe they don’t know any better. It’s not always that they are trying to hurt you or put you down.

So what have I learnt from this?

We have to work to at being liked. We have to fit in with social conventions. People can’t see inside you — you have to help them see what is inside you. All this has helped me to be able to get along better with many more people, and I suppose, in my old age, I even have friends.

Sadly, though, I never really feel liked. That’s the result of years of abuse.

But I’m still working at it. :)