Erin

I do not ask "am i annoying" because if I wasn't already, that will make me annoying, fulfilling the prophecy as foretold by the ancient ones. But I sure do think it sometimes.

It's both heartening and really depressing to know I'm not the only one who gets stuck in that little feedback loop. I constantly worry I annoy the shit both out of strangers and ever what I care about, but if I try to figure out if I am actually annoying to them, that in itself is annoying, and we end up in this metaphysical bullshit pretzel ouroboros from which I cannot escape.

You are not annoying.

I am probably not annoying. I hope I'm not, oh god here comes the self-doubt klein bottle again

is that sometimes you know you can get annoying. you know you can hyperfixate on something, but you're never really great at telling when.

i make it a point to often say, "hey, if you have a problem with me or what i'm doing, please tell me. be explicit, because i'm generally really bad at picking up on things. please just say something so i know if i'm bothering you, because otherwise i won't know."

a friend recently dropped mid-conversation:

i was annoyed enough by what you were saying to silence you, but i didn't say anything to you because i didn't think it would be constructive.

i'm no longer friends with this person.

so much of the "am i annoying people?" bad feedback loop is because nobody will just speak up and say something. everyone is so conflict-avoidant that they would rather tolerate (or, as the case was, stop tolerating) rather than just say, hey, what you're doing is too much, please chill.

and it's not just about being annoying. i've had conversations like this:

"I don't like it when [a] calls me [b]."

"Okay, well, have you asked [a] to stop calling you [b]?"

"No."

then how do you ever expect [a] to figure it out.

if people can't trust that you'll be honest with them, they can't trust that you're being honest with them, and so doubt like this creeps in. "is everyone just tolerating me because they don't want to say i'm being annoying?" is a thought because people have proven that's exactly what they'll do.