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So back in September, I talked about how I hadn’t blogged in a long time due to social anxiety and healthiness. And yet, now that I’ve been rather miserable (health-wise) for over a month, it looks like I’m still not saying much. I think, perhaps, it’s partly that I’ve been trained, “if you can’t say something nice/pleasant, don’t say anything at all.” It’s partly that the only thing I ever write about besides my health isn’t so LOUD anymore. I’m figuring this whole thing out, looking for a “theme” or a “voice,” now that my old voice died of laryngitis. I’m not sure what I can say without a) being accused of wallowing, b) making people think I’m “fishing” for compliments or reassurances, or c) making people think I’m talking about them. I’m not. For the record, I find blogging about why you haven’t blogged in a while bizarre and boring and over-meta, yet somehow necessary.
Now, on to the subject at hand. I have seen a lot of movies recently… and read a book or two… about how the human spirit overcomes the Universe’s tendency to try to snuff people out through a long, painful experience. I confess that I often think, “how do they do that? Where do the reserves of passion, energy, and effort come from?” I think through my own life, at the number of times/reasons I’ve given up, and wonder whether I’d fight like that for my own life.
I was driving home yesterday, completely exhausted and nervous about driving in the dark, and thinking about the issue of giving up. I had a revelation of sorts. I haven’t entirely given up yet because I’m a morning person (that’s a cause, not just a reason). Mom used to groan at me as I “skipped down to the corner to wait for the bus” every morning (her words). Now, I wake up in the morning (barring extenuating circumstances) feeling like everything’s basically OK. I can handle it. I get my family ready for the day, I do a little online work and socializing, I straighten up a room or fold a little laundry, I cuddle my tiny girl. I go to work and tackle the tasks that’ll set the tone for the day.
And then I work more, and have my afternoon low, and get frustrated with this or that. I get home and am reminded of all the things I’m not accomplishing at home, I’m tired and usually hurting and a little cranky. I’m worried about not being as energetic as I need to be to keep up with my tiny girl, or to keep up with my husband for that matter. Sometimes, I think thoughts that would make a truly depressed person want to curl up and die, or less go to bed and sleep all day… only I have those thoughts at bedtime. So I go to bed, [hopefully] sleep it off, and suddenly it’s morning again. And I can take on the world.
It’s really a very nice way of arranging things. Although it would obviously be better if I weren’t down at night, at least I don’t have to start my days that way.
Maybe this all explains why I’m so damn frustrated when I don’t get to sleep at night, above and beyond the irritation that you’d expect from a sleep-deprived person.
It makes me feel a little better about things, when I can see the pattern.
“Hey! You there?” [Wham! Wham!] “Hellooo; anybody there? Aww… damn.”
“What? What happened?”
“Oh, nothing. The world’s just cutting out again.”
“You know, you really should get that worked on.”
“I know; I know. It’s just so much effort. You have to do the research, pack it up, haul it in, and hope you find a mechanic who knows what they’re doing.”
“What’s it doing this time? Snow crash? Fuzzy lines?”
“Fuzzy edges, long silences.”
“It’s still there, though, just cutting out on you?”
“Yeah, so far. But it doesn’t seem to have much, I dunno, history.”
“What? Like no past?”
“Not that I can recall, at least. OK, that’s not true… it has a distant past, just not an immediate past.”
“How immediate?”
“I’m sorry, who are you again? What were we talking about? Tired now.”
“OK, yeah. You go rest. I’ve got a call to make.”
I have a social anxiety disorder. It is controlled.
But saying a disorder is “controlled” is like saying a disease is “in remission.” It’s not gone, it’s there… waiting. Like a bear in hibernation, getting hungrier and hungrier, and waiting to devour you when it wakes up. [For those of you with a disease in remission, please take no offense. I, too, have a chronic illness that fades for long periods, only to flare without warning. I personally hope that your impression of what "remission" means is far more hopeful than mine.]
Social anxiety manifests itself in many ways. Some have a fear of crowds. Some fear large social gatherings with people they don’t know well, while others fear even medium-sized social gatherings with anybody, whether they know them well or not. I have after-the-fact fear regarding effects of conversations with very small groups, or with individuals.
I have a tendency to replay conversations with small groups, or especially one-on-one conversations, until I am queasy. I agonize over every word I said and every expression on my interlocutors’ faces, combing through for opportunities to have gained (or signs that I have gained) their disapproval. I get excited when I have social contact with people whose company I enjoy, and I tend to… well… to talk. Which, of course, supplies plenty of opportunity to gain disapproval. It also supplies opportunity to gain approval, but my little anxiety-gremlin doesn’t see things that way.
—
Written after having drinks with a couple of dear friends, many months ago:
“A little decorum, please, for too much honesty is unbecoming.
Love and hate met in the silence as old and dear friends.
They fought in silence.
Made love in silence.
In silence became as one.”
—
To be clear, though, it is important to note that silence is at least as disturbing as speech. Pregnant pauses do not settle well, and the longer the pause, the less settled I am. If I see a friend and they don’t say hello… and maybe they look preoccupied or upset… I can’t help but wonder whether I’ve done something to upset them. If I send an e-mail and don’t get a response within a day or two (at least if a request for response was implied), I start wringing my hands. And goddess forbid there be a drastic change in communication, like daily conversation or correspondence followed by …whoosh…
I start having internal conversations, hashing out what could be wrong. I start attributing intentions to people who, I dunno… maybe life just got in the way! Maybe they’re busy, or sick, or think I’m mad at them and that I need space! No… I probably said too much. I probably said something wrong. I probably ran them off.
Fear is a self-fulfilling prophesy. When you think you have run someone off, and then they do say hi, you’re far more likely to blow up in their face and run them off for real. Having done it in past does not, however, cure you of doing it again. It just feeds the fear.
My husband is now gainfully employed. Not that staying home with our daughter isn’t “gainful”, but I think he’ll be happier with a combination of both.
My daughter learned to ride a tricycle today. She’s been practicing for a week or two, but today, she took off on her own, for the first time. She’s 2 years, 2 months old. Riding a trike is a 3-year milestone. I’m very, very proud.
I got 11 hours of sleep last night, 10 of which were uninterrupted. I was still groggy & achy all day, but that’s probably due to too much sleep, rather than too little… for the first time in a long, long time.
Because of this “red-letter day“-ness, we got to go out to eat as a family, for the first time in many months. Many.
Happy now.
I have fibromyalgia with chronic migraines. There is definitely something important to be said about not identifying yourself with your weakness. I firmly believe some of those things. However, although I am not fibromyalgia, I do have fibromyalgia. It is a part of me, and it does thoroughly affect my life, whether I like that or not. There are things I know I should not do, because I know I’ll hurt like hell tomorrow. So I guess I’m “letting it control me” to a certain extent, but wouldn’t you, if (for example) eating potatoes made it almost impossible to walk the next day?
Some days, it’s a laughing/joking matter. After all, it’s awfully ridiculous. Some days, it is definitely NOT a laughing/joking matter. Ridiculous? How on earth can that word apply? Well, a stand-up comic once said (sorry I don’t remember who), “I don’t trust any organism that bleeds one week out of every month and doesn’t die.” This statement renders menstruation hilarious, or at least ridiculous, if you have your ‘I have a sense of humor about mildly offensive things that are said about my sex’ hat on. Well, pain is a natural phenomenon with the evolutionary purpose (yes, I know that’s not the right way to say it, as a scientist, but just fill in the right phrasing there) of giving the organism an evasive reaction to something that’s bad for it. Or to tell the organism that there’s something wrong and something should be fixed. You know, the “jerk back from a hot stove” reflex, or the “get away from the thing that’s biting you because it intends to eat you” drive. How absolutely absurd is it when you’re in as much pain as you would be in if a tiger were gnawing on your head, only without the tiger? See? It’s ridiculous.
As promised, here is a post originally written 6/6/08 (or so):
There is a sensation. It’s not exactly painful. My mom calls it an “all gone” feeling. Haruki Murakami refers to it in Norwegian Wood as a “knot of air in [the] chest.” At night, in that space between asleep and awake, I dream about what’s causing it. Once, it was a knife – just to the left of my breastbone and angling out toward my left arm, straight through my heart. Once, it was a big piece of sports tape, wrapped around my entire ribcage. I decided to leave it there, since sports tape tends to take skin with it. Often, it’s a giant needle, like in Pulp Fiction, which somebody has mistakenly filled with lidocane instead of adrenaline. And then, at times, the syringe is filled with capsaicin instead.
There is a sensation. It’s not exactly painful. I’ve referred to it as my “nerves singing.” They do sing, too, in this high-pitched keening melody. They tried electro-acupuncture on me once. It was incredibly excruciating and left these awful burn-mark-like bruises. They did a test on me, too, where they attached one electrode to my hand and another to the “funny bone” nerve. They sent electrical impulses from one to the other, to measure conductivity. The pain was… wow… zing; YOW; Haaaaalelujah. The sensation is like that, only a soloist and not the whole friggin’ Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It zings back and forth from my ankles to my hips, up and down my shins, in between my ribs, up and down my arms, up and down my back, between my ears and my collarbone. In the morning, in that space between asleep and awake, I dream about what’s causing it. Sometimes, it’s a mad electro-acupuncturist’s mean trick. He’s wired me in and won’t let me escape. Often, it’s my real acupuncturist, who’s just found a “sweet spot” with her needles and is gently twisting them to put me right again. Sometimes, it’s that I’ve been almost asleep for so long that my body is metabolizing my muscles to keep me alive.
There is a sensation. It’s not exactly painful. I think of it as a “not an addict” feeling. John Mayer calls it “Something’s Missing.” It’s a… hmmm…. It’s like that scene in Traffic, the first time you see her freebasing, and she has that sudden look of, “Oh, yes, that’s right. I knew I had something I should be doing all this time. I found it! Good. Now I can be content. Forever.” Only I’ve never done anything like that. Never. I mean, sure I’ve had pain killers for this and that ailment. They do little good because I have this dear sweet pain disorder I love so much. They do make you feel pleasant sometimes, like when you get the doses they give you in the hospital, but they don’t feel like she felt in the movie, that’s for damn sure. But there’s still this sensation, like I’ve given up something that gave me that feeling; on those days, I could quote her, “On the good days, I feel like I get it, like it all makes sense. I can stay in the moment, I don’t have to control everything in the future, and I believe everything is gonna work out fine. On the bad days I just want to grab the phone and start dialing numbers. I want to pull my hair and run through the streets screaming.”
