Had honestly kind of been thinking of myself as still in a twilight exception where my “how I react to stimulus and with what drives” personality could change but the old “with what words and ideas do I consider the world” stuff didn’t change
Realized that it was hey, the delirium has fully gone, but I’m still narrating my life to myself in this breezy, flip tone, we’re still on vacation!
Then I realized no, that one’s a permanent change.
Which is a difference from mental illness (the bipolar stuff) or psychedelics, cause then I could step back and in a calm voice be like “hmm, I’m manic”, “yeah, I’m tripping balls rn”, but if I try and step back and go “hm, I’ve been sassy lately” that voice is itself sassy
It may be useful for chatting people up at bars but the light, voluble tone switches my “comforting people in the face of uncertainty and loss” performance from awkward to actively atrocious
I am still somehow enduringly aware of social off-notes like this but do not feel guilt, shame, or regret so there’s no unpleasantness or pressure associated with that
It’s kinda bullshit how I’d try and observe and copy socially skilled people’s actions (“just make a thing of boldly going up and TOUCHING girls”, that sure didn’t work) and throw up my hands like “what, do they pick up some sort of invisible telepathic signal to know what’ll be well-recieved?” and they absolutely do
I am kind of hoping that this personality is as socially enabled in pursuits other than bagging ladies, because I feel I could incorporate “charisma is real and you have it” into my worldview easier than “it’s just like they always said, women don’t use their brains, they feel”
Where else would that be testable? Getting your friends to pick your favorite bar going out? Plotting to poison the sheikh’s daughter? I don’t have an office for office politics. Board game group?
Though learning that many people in general didn’t, in fact, operate off their own internal senses of the world that however alien I could decode and appeal to but rather were, in fact, guided by emotion just waiting for someone sufficiently charismatic to capture, charm, and control them, even if it was boys and girls, would be a real misanthropic kick in the pants, maybe not the best sense to have kicking around upon learning I can capture, charm, and control people.
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