Ever since I was a child I've been very different from my peers, but it's something which has been very difficult to explain the few times I tried. Recently, on the RedPill I came across a comment posted by user saffron_pill which had a link to a comic which explained the feeling. This is the comic: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

I've been possessed with the idea that the devil gives the man since before I can remember. I remember going to church as a small child and thinking "do these people actually believe they're going to float up to a magical place in the sky when they die?" It's not a comforting feeling carrying this alone for my whole life, you can't discuss things like this with your peers or even most adults. Over the years I've tried to unload parts of this onto a few friends that showed me understanding/warmth, it's usually been in the context of a female friend who may or may not have been interested in me and this happened recently which is what led me to the Red Pill.

The simplest way to explain it is I'm continually stuck in the moment before death, unable to shake this deep-seated feeling that part of me isn't going to transfer to the next moment. Horrible short-term memory may be part of the cause but it must be much more complicated than that...

This made it very difficult to relate to my peers as a child, so I barely spoke at all except when asked a direct question. This continued almost unchanged until I was in college and I started to talk a bit more, my main interests were psychology and philosophy and I worked in a low-income area at a retail store so I developed an "acting the fool" persona to have something to entertain myself and others. I would say absurd things or purposefully misunderstand what people said just to joke around, but deep down I had a profound sadness so I was happy to interact with people to distract myself.

I finished reading No More Mr. Nice Guy the other day and really related to a lot of the book because I was a "nice guy," and helping others allowed me to get away from the lifetime of sadness and solitude which I carried with me. I've read quite a bit here over the last month or two but longstanding patterns are hard to change, and I don't know anymore if I'm the sad, serious person who sees the tragedy in everything or if I'm the jester which sees the comedy in the world around myself.

Ever since I was a child I've been very different from my peers, but it's something which has been very difficult to explain the few times I tried. Recently, on the RedPill I came across a comment posted by user saffron_pill which had a link to a comic which explained the feeling. This is the comic: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

I've been possessed with the idea that the devil gives the man since before I can remember. I remember going to church as a small child and thinking "do these people actually believe they're going to float up to a magical place in the sky when they die?" It's not a comforting feeling carrying this alone for my whole life, you can't discuss things like this with your peers or even most adults. Over the years I've tried to unload parts of this onto a few friends that showed me understanding/warmth, it's usually been in the context of a female friend who may or may not have been interested in me and this happened recently which is what led me to the Red Pill.

The simplest way to explain it is I'm continually stuck in the moment before death, unable to shake this deep-seated feeling that part of me isn't going to transfer to the next moment. Horrible short-term memory may be part of the cause but it must be much more complicated than that...

This made it very difficult to relate to my peers as a child, so I barely spoke at all except when asked a direct question. This continued almost unchanged until I was in college and I started to talk a bit more, my main interests were psychology and philosophy and I worked in a low-income area at a retail store so I developed an "acting the fool" persona to have something to entertain myself and others. I would say absurd things or purposefully misunderstand what people said just to joke around, but deep down I had a profound sadness so I was happy to interact with people to distract myself.

EDIT:
I distilled the most relevant info which I've come across here so far to this quote:
Your past is a lens which determines how you view all future interactions.

I spent many lifetimes alone with my sadness, I developed an over the top persona to relate to people but neither of these lenses have allowed me to really be what I want to be or form a healthy relationship.

My biggest problem, as far as I can tell, is I lack charisma- I have a tremendous amount of warmth but little power and even less presence. I've developed better posture, lifted weights for years and put on 20 pounds of muscle, but my sadness still permeates me so I always treat people as I would if this was the last moment of my life. Any advice or insight at all would be appreciated.