A quick insight

I thought this might be informative for those who don't suffer anxiety disorders. People don't get it when I stay home sick but don't call work. "Just a quick phone call or a text message, that's all we ask." Well, too bad, I can't.

I have what must be descirbed as a very mild social anxiety disorder and very mild depression. I've thought about suicide but never attempted. I've thought about self harm and once or twice I tried to cut my finger deliberately but I only drew blood once. I'm not suffering as many people suffer. But sometimes life is hard.

Social anxiety is all about a fear of rejection. We all know what it's like to be rejected; it sucks. The reason anxiety is different is because it's just pretty stupid. I fear rejection in every situation, even situations where it doesn't make sense. When I am rejected it hurts so much it makes a cost-benefit analysis clearly against trying anything.

What's more, because I'm human, and because I know rationally that things really aren't so bad, I hate the idea of people pitying me, of not rejecting me but wanting to, because they don't want to hurt me. That makes me angry, mostly at myself. I absolutely don't want that. At the very least it's not a good treatment for my anxiety. I have to learn to deal with this.

I'm going to give you a quick, though not recent, example. I have never used cheques myself. I am not a cheque person, having banked only after the invention of Internet Banking and ubiquitous EFTing. I was once, however, given a cheque in payment for some tutoring I did. Other times this has happened I've put the cheque in a deposit envelope and the money has turned up in my account days later. Being out of money on that day and a bit hungry, I went to get it cashed - that is, to withdraw cash. I did this at my bank. The cheque, however, was not drawn on that particular bank.

Those readers with an understanding of financial matters will recognise that of course this won't work. Banks aren't in the business of handing out cash on presentation of little bits of paper. So when I tried to present my cheque to the teller I was told this couldn't happen, because it wasn't drawn on this bank, but would I like to deposit it. I replied no thank you and left. Once outside the bank, I cried a little bit. I didn't eat, instead walking around the city avoiding eye contact with everyone until I had to go wherever I was going that day. The feeling of rejection stayed with me for nearly two days. That afternoon I couldn't concentrate, I was too busy thinking what an idiot I was.

Was I an idiot? No. Was the teller particularly mean? No. That's what makes it a disorder. And it really hurt, that sort of physical pain in your stomach of utter humiliation. It's absurd. But that's what it's like. That's the risk I face every time I interact with anyone, for any reason. Some person's reaction to me may set me off, totally irrationally. As I say, that's what makes it a disorder, the fact that it's absurd and ridiculous and dare I say it, crazy.

This is why I don't do things. I hate that I have missed opportunities, from that time in grade one I could've spoken to that kid, through to just yesterday when I could've spoken to that guy. I hate this utterly because I know how capable I am. I know I could do it. I just don't because I fear what my fucked up brain chemistry could do to me if I do.

So much for quick. Sorry.

I want to watch more movies. 80s movies. Juno. Sweeny Todd. Whatever. I want also to be liked. Mostly I just want to be left alone for about a week, maybe two. No responsibilities, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. Just to be for a little while. A holiday, I think they call that.

Yes, really. Still.

I know, I should blog, but the things on my mind aren't things I can write about. Work: I have a fiduciary duty not to bitch about certain things. Other work: I'm meant to be doing that, not bitching about how I lost my fucking usb with the perfect database design on it. (Talk about fucking annoying. There is no way I can come up with the same quality again. Ok there is, but I don't want to ... I've already done it twice). And then there's the elephant: my dad. That I definitely can't talk about for a whole host of reasons.

I'm sorry I can't provide the entertainment I used to. You never know, that day might return.

10h 5m 31s

It's been a while since I've put anything up here. More than a year, in fact. I have been reading over my old stuff and it's good. I'm glad I have it. I'm also glad of my black books. I'm not so glad of my book Principles of Corporations Law.

That's a lie. I love having the book. I love the ability to know. I hate the essay. The problem is that I know this essay won't be any good. It can't be. I don't have time to make it good. It's due in 10h 3m 43s. I can't research and write an essay in that time - which is what I'd need to do. Of course, while my preference is never to hand in anything less than my best work (ha!) if I don't get something in by the due time I'll get zero. That will cause me to fail law.

Welcome back.

handy hint #{Rand(1,200)}

If you pull a doona over your head and sit up, and hold your phone at arm's length it lights up the inside to look almost like archetypical light speed travel. You have to be keeping the doona taught with the phone, pushing it out with that arm. Be sure not to let any additional light in. I don't deserve it.

Works best if you're not wearing glasses and have water in your eyes.

I wanted to talk about all sorts of things. About how Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens makes me cry. About how I keep napkins in my car for that reason (and also because I have nowhere else to put them and because sometimes you need to be saved from a BBQ sauce emergency - that's what the moist towelettes are for).

I was going to explain that my car was out of petrol and my phone out of battery and how that's quite symbolic because I'm all out of giveafuck. And I wasn't going to make a joke, because I really am. I am bored and tired. With everything. I just... I just want to do something else with my life. Something fun. Something that doesn't involve arranging a conference a week before it happens, something that doesn't involve rewriting budgets. Perhaps something where I have a chance of winning (I'm referring here to Kingborough Council).

I also wish I wasn't inhibited by the people who read this. It's nobody's fault, but I have the classic problem: I want to say things and I want people to know that they've been said but I don't want anyone to talk to me about it. This isn't true of everything on this blog, but occasionally it's an issue. And so I just don't write those things.

i'm totally sleeping on the floor tonight

That's primarily because my back hurts though, rather than anything else.

After a few glasses of wine I decided I would like to go out and meet a girl. Not for the reasons that spring to mind, but because I need to get better at this meeting people stuff. Alcohol helps to some degree but I shouldn't need it to meet someone. I just have this massive fear of rejection and no idea how to start a conversation. But as I was explaining to Angie just before, as you become more familiar with the thing you're afraid of failing at the less afraid you are. Because you know. And it's not the failure that kills us, it's the uncertainty.

a long and stupid rant

Nearly a week without a post. It's not that nothing has happened, because things have. I'm going to Canberra tomorrow. I've not done all the work I'm supposed to have done. All that sort of stuff. Not to mention that my parents got home on Tuesday evening (good thing I finished the last of the pot on Monday night, hey?). Interestingly, earlier that evening I scared myself by thinking about what would happen if they died.

It was more than that. I was showering before going to pick them up from the airport. I had already heard from them when they were in Melbourne so I knew they were alive so far. But what if there was a plane crash on the approach to Hobart? What would happen? I concern myself with such trivialities, often, until they become so overwhelming as to cause me to sob. Not just cry, sob. The last time I was reading encyclopaedic and purely factual articles about the holocaust. Just wikipedia. Browsing around, reading about everything that happened, and suddenly, mid-sentence, nothing particularly in-and-of-itself bad, I started to cry. It just... it just hit me. There is a perfect (and beautiful, in a way I can't explain) description of this flowing-over effect over on another blog.

While I was writing that paragraph the same thing happened. I cried.

So yeah, I think I was saying that on Tuesday I thought about all the things that would happen if there was a plane crash. I'd press through, try to see what happened. I'd organise a funeral and occupy myself with procedural matters and work. I imagined a phone call to Centrelink asking to cancel payments to people I'm not authorised to represent because they died. I wonder how they'd handle that. I even thought about getting funeral sponsorship before I realised how ridiculous the idea was. And I'd get it all done because it would be distracting and I wouldn't cry until the funeral. I would, of course, but I wouldn't break down. I'd be a pall-bearer for Gideon - front right I think - and that's when it would start. And by the end I'd be unable to move, catatonic from the grief. I'd run out of tears and snot and everything else but I'd still try to push it out.

I wondered who I'd invite to the funeral. I only know a few of Gideon's friends - how would I tell the rest? Conceivably I'd send an email to everyone in his contacts list from his account - but how weird would that be? The thing is, of course, that people my age just don't check the obituaries. They wouldn't know about the funeral.

Then of course there's that other question: who can I invite for support? Is it impolite to invite people to the funeral who didn't know the deceased just so I have a shoulder to cry on? It's probably worse if in a drug-fuelled moment of madness you've recently confessed your quickly-dying (as opposed to undying; more later) love for them. This quick-dying love (almost, but not quite, entirely unlike quick-drying glue) isn't to say that it's any less, it's just ... it's something that is more of a friendship love that I could clearly get over very quickly in any other sense. It's me saying that this will pass, as a phase.

In twelve hours I'll be in Melbourne, presumably. I haven't packed yet. The list of things I was supposed to do before leaving and hasn't started seems to be longer than it was, impossible though that is. There is one thing I have done though. Something I did yesterday, late at night, after I got home. Something that was far more important than sleep.

I have created something to give to my next love. Proper love. Something sacred and withheld. Sort of like virginity, sort of like a particular love-song. Something that is special and will be for one person only and forever associated with that person. Interestingly like virginity, and unlike most love songs, I've created this without a person to whom to give it. That makes me feel quite guilty. Here's something that's beyond important. It's unique and special and for just one person. It's perfect and I know it is. It's precisely what it should be. And there's nobody to give it to. Of the I-could-like-these-people-if-I-tried-(or-was-drunk/stoned) group, I could assign it to one of them. But it's a tad generic. There are specific things for them - or for at least 7e-1 of them. One of which I created smilingly just the other day, in fact, Monday, I believe, and haven't been able to do anything with since. I'm going back to an Annabel-style vagueness here and it's not good. Suffice it to say that I've got something and it's a perfect valentines gift for a girl I don't yet know (or don't yet know I love).

It's nearly three in the morning. I really need to be up in five hours if I'm going to even get packed - something which is probably fairly important for this going away business. But this has been nice. I enjoyed writing it, and congratulations if you managed to read it without needing a toilet break. Your bladder is truly laudable. It's nice to cry sometimes too. We all know that.

I really need to work on my endings.

doned and strunk

I keep forgetting things. I used to absorb information. Now I forget things that are said even when they're really fucking important. Troublesome. I hate it. I feel like Algernon or whatever. I'm losing my goodness. My mind, which is all I have. Fuck. It could be my binge drinking and drug taking but... I dunno.

I am anxty much. Same as always.

Fuck.

have you ever,

ever felt like this? How strange things happen, when you're going round the twist.

I have that song stuck in my head. I'm pensive. Earlier I had the song "I'm a believer" stuck in my head.

I'm just in a New York state of mind.

shrug

I actually think like this. Not properly, of course. Not those precise things. But things like that. Less of the "you probably couldn't name some of the things I've done with your daughter" and more of the "so, you lived through the sixties and you have a daughter... so you've probably had sex sometime... I wonder what that was like for you". That sort of stuff. The stuff I don't know about people but I could probably figure out.

In other news, to my great hilarity, I sat down to my criminal law exam this morning to find law girl sitting one space away from me diagonally, ironically exactly the same as always, to my left. I don't think I've ever seen the right side of her face. That's a lie, but sometimes it feels that way.

how to procrastinate

I've spent my entire day on Facebook. I've been reading about... well, I've been mostly reading sex advice. Not in a creepy way. I've been reading from groups like 50 Mistakes Women Make When Having Sex and the counter-group 50 Mistakes Men Make While Having Sex. There are many such groups - things guy should do for girls, that girls should do for guys (less sex-oriented). There are wall posts and discussions.

Something interesting however. The "50 mistakes women make" group has about 62,800 members. The largest group for "nice guys" has about 300 members. There are quire a few groups about nice guys who are never noticed, most of which have 12 - 30 members. Small cliques of guys who have become bitter because of too many girls going out with arseholes and missing them. I'm not at that stage - I'm still optimistic and naive - but I can see how I could get there.

We're evolutionarily weaker, is the problem. Nice guys almost never meet nice girls - just because it's hard to meet people being a typical shy nice guy. And then neither the girl nor the guy, in the event that the two find each other, has the courage to start anything for risk of ruining a great friendship. And so we bumble along unhappy and lusting after close friends but really quite happy with their friendship, just with this evolutionary requirement of a deeper relationship which is inevitably impossible.

So yeah, maybe I am a bit bitter...

washing up has been done!

I'm beginning to recognise that the house looks a lot better when there isn't shit strewn everywhere. Washing up done, rubbish taken out, all that.

Unfortunately it's four thirty in the afternoon and I have not yet done my essay due in at an undetermined time tomorrow. I have a feeling that it's nine in the morning but I'm not sure. I'll get it in by five and plead ignorance. Unfortunately Wednesday I have my criminal law exam at nine in the morning and I really need to do some revision before that. Double unfortunately I have my algebra exam on Thursday morning at nine and I really really need to do some revision for that too. Then I have a day off, which I will spend revising for my computational techniques exam which is at nine on Saturday morning.

Then mark my words, Saturday night, I am getting massively, massively fucked up. I deserve to lose some brain cells after all that.

regrets

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we do things we regret. But most of the time we don't do things and that's the regret.

I'm watching my DVD of Ben Folds Live with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. And I am really upset that I didn't go to Melbourne to see him with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I considered it. Gideon and I were going to go together. It was going to cost about $500 by the time flights were included. And that was for the cheapest tickets.

It would have been worth it. Fuck, five hundred dollars is nothing. Ok, so it's about a month of my income... but I could've managed it. It would have been incredible. I love music. There is no concert I can imagine being better than Ben Folds with an orchestra. It would have been worth the money. And it's unlikely I'll ever get another opportunity to see it. Certainly not at that price. That bothers me more than can be imagined.

There are other things that bother me less. Like not seeing The White Stripes when they were here. And a number of other things I did do but shouldn't have.

Sigh.

Update: What was missed

how things change

Before we begin I'd like to mention a very high pitched noise I'm hearing as a result of having plugged in my phone. I'd also like to say briefly that I bruised my toe.

When I was younger I had no sense of humour. I appreciated wit but I didn't find it funny. I would read Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams books and not laugh. Seriously. I loved and understood them, I just... I just didn't see them as funny. They were just good stories. And so it was that I didn't laugh when reading the Adrian Mole stories. I didn't see them as funny, I just saw them as a description of life. I quite liked them. They were educative. I'm still quite a fan of the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. A great book. But never one that I've seen as funny. Only some years after reading them (between when I was aged twelve and when I was aged fifteen I read them) did I read the blurb which elucidated the humour. And I see why people would find them funny. But they're not funny at all, really. They're just... real life. Or a life, at least.

Thanks to someone's blog entry I was reminded of this recently. I was specifically reminded of a time Adrian and his girlfriend break up because she won't show him one of her breasts. So he dumps her. He was fifteen by this stage, I think. (One of the reasons I found it so real is because when you're that age everything that's so humorous really is just as important as the book makes it out to be). Everybody in his class is talking about their sexual escapades and how one particular girl will have sex with anyone for four shillings and a pound of grapes (or something like that; some money and a pound of grapes). So he gets one of his friends to arrange a date with him and this girl. They go to a roller-skating rink and he wears his PE shorts because they're all he has that matches his friend's description of what people wear on dates. He takes her the pound of grapes and is unceremoniously rejected, then ridiculed for bringing grapes, since she has no idea why she'd want them.

Interestingly, I was once Adrian. Not necessarily Adrian Mole but I was called Adrian as part of an internet pseudo-relationship stalking thing that happened a few years back. Well, last year. Beginning of 2006. Crazy, crazy times. And my name was Adrian because that's what happened. And the more I think about it the more Adrianish I am. But then again other friends have said there's no Adrian to me at all. Quite possibly true too.

I'd like to move on now to a completely different topic. Conversations. I don't start them, because I don't like to be rejected. Especially on MSN. I also fear the rejection of text message or email communications where I send the last message and get no reply. It has to happen eventually but there's inevitably no "goodbye" message. So it's one of those "you hang up first" things. I'm disheartened by how often I send the last message. It could be because I always reply even when totally unnecessary but ... I don't know. It's just disappointing that I want to talk to them more than they want to talk to me. It makes me feel reliant. Like I'm being their friend and they really don't want me around. I know it's stupid - I know that, but I still feel it sometimes, to some small degree.

Sigh.

i feel terrible

I just want to bitch and moan forever but, unfortunately, I don't even have the energy to do that. I wish there was something interesting I could talk about. Law Girl was in the row in front of me today. She showed her friends a Calvin and Hobbes comic. I skipped my other lecture. I don't have a car. I want food. But not food really I want... I don't even know what I want. And that's my problem.