Connected Yet Removed
The people that know me and interact with me often remark that I always seem attuned to people and my environment. They remark about how I know so much about certain things, that I have clearly experienced a lot and retained the benefit of this experience. My awareness of matters is high and it is often commented on how I am able to “plug in” to something and instantly understand it, know how it works and what to do. Whether it is a meeting, discussion or event, I always fit in. I am not going to disagree with those comments.
Let us imagine that you are a massive football (soccer for our transatlantic cousins) fan. I listen to how you analyse a forthcoming match and discuss the impact of an expensive new signing. I carefully pay attention as you detail how the opposition centre-half is weak on short passes played into the penalty area. I see your eyes widen and light up with interest as you debate these issues with fellow fans. I make a careful note of what is said by you and the others and store it so that I can regurgitate it later to someone else who is similarly interested in football and pass it off as my own knowledge and observations. I do this with conviction so that nobody recognises that these comments are not my own. I spent the morning before the match that we are attending, reading the sport sections of two quality newspapers and also the satellite broadcaster’s webpage for the match, along with other bits and pieces from around the internet in order to assemble my knowledge for this, our first match together. I knew from your social media postings that you are a passionate fan of this team and as I targeted you I pretended I was as well. I managed to recall key trophies the team had won and recent events from the football club’s website to enable me to demonstrate I was also a committed fan. In the course of the discussion with you and your friends who are also die-hard fans I trot out a piece I memorised from a football writer, tweaking it here and there to give it a ring of authenticity as I explain how the captain, sorry our captain, needs a holding midfielder alongside him to allow him to venture further forward and play key balls to the lone man up front. You all nod in agreement showing admiration in my knowledge despite it being acquired elsewhere. I feel the fuel flowing.
I attend the match with you and see how excited you are by the occasion. Your conversation speeds up as you talk about the team the manager has selected. The smell of beer and hot dogs and pies mixes together on the concourse, heightening the occasion as the singing from the away fans drifts from inside the stadium. An event like this assails the senses. The press of the crowd as it makes its way inside seems to lend energy to you and your pace quickens, causing me to have to speed up to ensure I am not left behind. Once in our seats your face shows how you are eagerly anticipating the game, the chanting and shouting already loud, bouncing around the stadium and competing with the delivery of the pa announcer. All around me I can see nervous anticipation, bullish enthusiasm and well-founded confidence. I listen to the chants so I learn the words enabling me to join in. I watch you as you crane forward in your seat, eyes fixed on the unfolding match, fists clenched and repeated utterances issued loudly to urge your team on. I mimic your exhortions and body language, leaning towards the pitch and then jumping up as your team, now our team, opens the scoring. You hug me and I return the hug, jumping up and down in a replica of the delight that washes across the home crowd. The taunting chants aimed at the opposition ring out and I readily join in, gesturing towards the disconsolate faces in the adjoining stand. A second goal is scored, this time from the cries of delight and the conjoining of profanity and blasphemy the goal is clearly of both quality and importance.
“That puts us on top of the league on goal difference,” you explain as if you are able to see that I am wondering why there is such a heightened reaction to this second goal. I know however that you are not wondering that at all. I know that you are thrilled that I am embracing with such enthusiasm the match, sharing the main passion in your life. I join in with the cheers, the shouting, the cries of frustration and disappointment, the barracking of the referee when he makes a poor decision and ensure I am fully integrated with the experience. I look around me watching the passion, the hope, the fury and the delight etched on the other supporters. The stadium is a cauldron of noise and emotion. I am plugged into this experience alongwith fifty five thousand other people. I can see the emotions are raw and visceral, even primitive.
I see all of this around me yet I feel none of it. I merely mimic everyone else in order to fit in. I am attached to the experience but I feel nothing. I am completely detached from it. All it does is serve a purpose to enable me to create and build bridges and ties with you. I can see how it all affects you, it is clear to see. I am there yet I am not. I am connected yet removed. This is how it feels, or rather, this is how it does not.
22 thoughts on “Connected Yet Removed”
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Ok, I just watched this on YouTube and I am starting to really understand your kind better. HG, what did you feel as a young child?
I cannot recall a lot of the feelings K.
I liked my old comment and I was able to edit it. I threw in 2 commas.
K
MAY 22, 2017 AT 4:23 AM
It is no wonder you are able to articulate feelings so well in your posts, you have spent most of your life observing them in order to fit in and survive. Your ability to facsimile emotion is uncanny and your limited range or absence of certain emotions only highlights the paradoxical nature of your indisputable talent. To be connected, yet removed, is unfathomable to our kind. It is no surprise that our fuel is paramount to your existence.
Knowing Everything Yet Nothing
But can you appreciate the soccer game? You have stated in the past that you can appreciate many things like a beautiful sunset, depeche mode’s music etc.
Appreciating is a kind of feeling too HG!
What the fuck is a soccer game?
Omg lol!!! Ok fine, football…
HG approves.
Lol.
Off and on topic at the same time.
It is amuses me how you “brits” and “muricans” “loves” each other!
When I started to study English, I used various american grammar books. Then I started to read english books (american mostly). Then I started to write, but I had no one who could “check” my grammar. I found the English teacher’s site where you could arrange the consultations. I chose the teacher with the best credentials and we arranged our consultations. I have to write letters to him (about different topics: weather, my country, food, etc.) and then he returns them to me with his corrections and explanations. He happened to be a Glaswegian Narc!
And every time that grammar Nazi berates me for “s” and “u” – “realiSe, coloUr” – “Stop to do it! It is a bloody muricans’ style!”
And when I wrote a letter about sport and said “Everything I see in soccer is the bunch of wealthy men chasing a ball…”, I got “Soccer? Soccer??? Bloody hell! It is a football! It is our game! Bloody muricans! Do you know what? Your letters rise my blood pressure!”.
I said “I sincerely hope you have the healthy cerebral blood vessels…”. Lol.
Whoa! Touched a nerve….lol
What do you actually genuinely enjoy in life HG, your not allowed to answer writing or anything that involves getting fuel. Just something or things that are pleasant to you and enjoyable ?
Eating souls.
That comes under fuel catergory so doesn’t count as an enjoyable thing
I KNEW that was a satanic ritual you were doing on Instagram! 😉
HG, thank you for sharing what this experience is like for you. In this case, you mimic the feelings of your date to connect her to you, even though this isn’t a team or sport you are passionate about. Impressions on others aside, however, is there any music/play/sport that you would go to alone and feel excited about? Or is it only the fuel you get at these events that pushes you to attend?
I go to certain things alone but more often with other people. When I do certain things alone I am gathering the experience and contemplating how it can be used to further my aims.
I could relate to this article 100% if you were at a Depeche Mode concert!!!!!! That leads on to my next thought……….how does it “feel” if you are somewhere you want to be or doing something that interests you…..such as a Depeche Mode concert???? By the way I only read a comment that made me believe you like Depeche Mode….maybe it is not true……I find it hard to believe myself but whatever it is that you like doing……and there must be something……..(try and keep it clean)…how does that “feel” as opposed to just doing something purely to ingrain yourself with someone else.
How lonely. Wanting to punish ex narc, I now know, would be redundant. Like beating a dead horse. Life seems to really suck for narcissists.
I really couldn’t care less. He deserves all of his living hell.
I know you love the life you have but I would not trade places with you for anything in the world.
That’s okay because I am not swapping.
Camouflage.
For Defence and protection ..to hunt..
Survival.
Blended and hidden.
Chameleon.
♩🎶’Lovin would be easy if your colours were like my dream’ comes to mind’.🎶
You feel nothing but that’s ok by you.
Or is it?
It is us that feel sad about your feeling nothing.
But should we?
We should not if you are fine with it.
You said many times that you have no wish to change.
However..everything evolves.
Into what, is the question.
Changes always come along.
It’s extremely hard to maintain the status quo in life no matter who 👤 or what ‘kind’.
Perspectives, perspectives.
Camouflage.
For Defence and protection ..to hunt..
Survival.
Blended and hidden.
Chameleon.
♩🎶’Lovin would be easy if your colours were like my dream’ comes to mind’.🎶♩
You feel nothing but that’s ok by you.
Or is it?
It is us that feel sad about your feeling nothing.
But should we?
We should not if you are fine with it.
You said many times that you have no wish to change.
However..everything evolves.
Into what, is the question.
Changes always come along.
It’s extremely hard to maintain the status quo in life no matter who 👤 or what ‘kind’.
Perspectives, perspectives.
I was particularly interested in your last paragraph as it was the catalyst for some self reflection… and i hope you are well….