Isolation...a study in Paranoia

My Mood: Irritated and nervous
Now Playing: Pres. Bush talking up the 'Road to Victory in Iraq' on NPR

Somedays I feel really alone, the swirling images and thoughts in my head only serving to alienate me. Mostly I feel this way at work, a place where I am one of two black people and the only black male. I know I am overly sensitive to the small verbal and nonverbal cues people give (or don't) around me, and, over the years, I've honed my general narcissism into an acute sense of paranoia to the machinations of others. So sometimes I feel really under siege at work. This is stressful and doesn't engender me to want to spend any time with my co-workers outside of the 8-4 confines of my cubicle.

So I miss parties and functions and my co-workers interact with me a little less and I become a little more withdrawn, a little more suspicious that the soft susurrus of whispers behind cubicles are centered on me. Part of it has to also do with age. I am by far the youngest in the office, although there is another one who is just past 30. Besides him, everyone else is at least mid to late 40s, highly republican, and fairly Caucasian in their tastes. Which is fine. But sometimes I wish there was someone here to whom I could relate without feeling like my very opinions and thoughts would be interpreted as attacks on their moral high ground should I utter them. It is not an untenable position but it does generate the tight muscles in the neck every so often.

It's just me here. I'm alone. Most times it doesn't bother me. I'm the lone snowflake, as Daimushi would put it. I am the Lone Gaijin in the land of the dead, to mix genres, metaphors, and movie images. Most days I let it roll like water and sunshine off a ducks back and keep on strutting.

But somedays, I really feel it, a shrouding mist over my eyes, the expressive non-looks of co-workers, the invitations hastily offered because of proximity to a conversation.

On these days, it's a bit hard not to just take the day and do something I want to do.
Welcome to my Fortress of Solitude - A 7' X 10' cubicle surrounded by silence and stares and paper.
Welcome to my Paranoia.

Benticore
Out