I am in the throes of emotional conflict right now, and so I thought I would perhaps use today’s diary entry to talk it out and maybe help me resolve the issue.

The basic issue is this : tonight, there is a meeting of the Richmond Writer’s Society. My friends and I used to go to it a long while ago, but then it sort of disintegrated due to lack of interest. The meetings were drawing fewer and fewer people, and so the organizer, a great fellow named Bill Marles, decided to just call the whole thing off. These things happen with loosely organized groups of hobbyists like a writer’s circle. It is sad, but it is a fundamental part of human social ecology.

I enjoyed the meetings, for the most part. It’s nice to be around other writers, and listen to them read their work, and offer constructive criticism. It was a good group of people, and Bill Marles is a very laid back and mild sort of guy, so things never got all tense or dramatic.

And trust me, with a group of writers reading their work to one another and opening it up to criticism, there is a real possibility for a lot of fragile egos getting bruised and people lashing out at one another and all the chaos and madness that would bring.

So now, apparently Bill Marles is having a meeting tonight, ostensibly just to socialize, but presumably also to talk over the possibility of starting the whole thing up again.

And by all logic, I should be eager to go to it. I enjoyed the group before. I am far far more of a writer than I was back when the group was going the first time. I have far more writing to talk about, including a whole freaking book. I am edging closer and closer to actually getting my shit together and treating writing like it’s my job and not just something I do in order to stave off insanity for another day. I certainly could use the networking with other writers, be known to them, share some time with the company of like minded people all trying to do the same thing I am, in my half-assed sideways way, trying to do.

Heck, it would even be a great place to go brag about how thoroughly I kicked NaNoWriMo’s ass. I could really use the ego boost, and this would be a group of people who truly appreciated what it took to belt out 50,000 words in 25 days. Good ones, too. Maybe not entirely properly fleshed out, but still a good read.

In short, I have every reason to go. So why the conflict?

Social anxiety, that’s why. Sigh.

My social anxiety has kicked in hard, dug its heels in, and is fighting me like a big dog pulling incredibly hard on its leash in exactly the opposite of where its owner wants it to go.

These are the worst moments in mental illness, in my books. When you are face to face with an immutable conflict between what both your will and your logic know is something you really want to do, but the illness simply will not let you do it, no matter what.

That is when you truly know that depression is a prison and you are simply not a free man. You are a prisoner, trapped in a dank dark depressing prison, and the bars are no less strong simply for being invisible and of your own devising. At some point in your life, you made a deal with the Devil, and signed away enormous amounts of your freedom, nearly all of it in fact, in order to build this fortress of a prison. And you did it in pursuit of an ever fleeting and impossible ideal of safety.

And over and over again, the Devil was all too happy to take more of your freedom in order to give you more of this illusion of safety, until your life was a life sentence in a tiny cell with no hope of escape.

Because even if those prison doors were to swing wide open and you were totally free, you know damned well that you would only get as far as the gate before looking out at that big, loud, complicated, stressful world that you are even less able to handle now than you were when you locked yourself away, and you would suddenly remember why you built it all in the first place, and then you would slink back to your cell with your tail between your legs, locking all the doors behind you, and go back to dreaming of escape.

Hmmm. Maybe I should write all that up as a short story.

So honestly, I do not know if I will go. It does not feel very likely right now. I just do not have the coping resources, that deep down mystical and elusive substance knows as ATC (Ability To Cope) to do it right now.

To compound the frustration, my dear friend Felicity emailed me on Thursday to tell me about this thing coming up, with the specific intent of giving me lots of warning before this event so I could have time to wrpa my brain around the idea and warm up to it and be emotionally ready when the time came.

And the email arrived fine. It’s there in my Inbox. But somehow, I just didn’t see it there. I didn’t find out that this thing was happening until late last night, and it’s happening tonight at 7pm.

I just didn’t get the message in time. Story of my life.

So despite having a lot of good reasons to go, I will likely pass. And if I do, the sane and sensible thing to do would be to simply accept that mental illness does this sometimes, and it’s out of my control, and hence I should not beat myself up for being too wimpy and cowardly to go.

We will see how that works out.