Therapy today. It helped me bring together a few of the strands of thought that I have been working on lately.

Yesterday, I was mad at the people in my film group for not noticing me and acting like I don’t exist and so forth and so on.

I’ve also discussed how good I am at hiding my problems from the world and how, in general, the message I send out to the world is “I’m fine!”.

It occurred to me in therapy today that these two things might be connected.

Due to my acute social anxiety, most of the time, I go around cloaked. I fade into the background terrified of being noticed and having my envelope of silent anonymity shattered. I even feel that way at home sometimes. Decloaking type events have to be planned well in advance so that I can be ready to let my guard down. It’s the sort of thing that takes a lot of emotional preparation on my part.

Having it happen suddenly is absolutely out of the question.

And the irony is that it’s not like I am bad at open social interaction. I can be quite dynamic and charming and witty in the right milieu.But the cringing and skulking habits run deep, and on a deep level I still feel like my only hope for safety is to pass unnoticed.

And then…. and then I sit there and bitterly complain that nobody notices me, people treat me like I don’t exist, and nobody cares about my deep pain, isolation, and loneliness.

Well they can’t care about what they don’t see! I do such a skillful job of hiding that I can’t very well fault people for not seeing through my brilliant disguise.

No, I’m not going to embed the video for that song. Google it yourself.

So in that sense, it’s my own fault that I got the shaft yesterday in film group. I hide most of the time. It’s a reflex, like a chameleon changing colors. If I want to really shine in the world, I am going to have to learn to come out of my shell and be emotionally present in the world instead of peering at it through a thick one way mirror.

So the question becomes : how to stop hiding.

It’s a tricky one because the answer is clearly not going to be some rational “this one weird trick will end your social isolation reflex forever” type thing. I do it because I don’t feel safe. And one of the reasons I don’t feel safe is because I am in so much pain from my freaking social isolation.

It’s not quite a Catch-22, but it’s close. A Catch-21. Or at least a Catch-20.

It almost makes me want to dabble in illegal drugs. If I could artificially lower my defenses in a controlled manner, I theoretically could get some of the positive social input I would need to feel safe and that might help me heal.

But that would be a tricky proposition, because whatever drug I used might also interfere with my ability to process the necessary emotions to make it stick, and so instead of becoming a saner person I would end up a “social drinker” or its equivalent.

And then I would slide right into addiction. I know this for a rock solid fact. Give me a way to escape my emotions and I will be using it all the fucking time.  So I don’t go there.

Besides, I wouldn’t need any illegal drugs, seeing as pot is practically legal here. I might try pot for that, seeing as it is not physically addictive and it doesn’t exactly produce euphoria, and has no depressant effect.

It just makes you feel pretty groovy for a while. That might be psychologically addictive, but it’s not like you can OD on pot. It’s not like pot destroys your liver or your lungs.

Worst case scenario, it just turns you into a giggly dumbass with no ambition. That’s not a desirable state – I have been useless and directionless and in the doldrums for too long.

But if it helped me cope… why the fuck not?

Anyhow, the point is, I have a bigger problem than my petty bitterness. I am the otter of my own fate, however unwittingly, and nothing is going to change until I resolve the conflict between wanting to be noticed and wanting to be invisible.

If I can get a hold of myself, calm my nerves, steady myself, and go out into the world with shields down and energy up, I might be able to bring some springtime sunshine and some rains to my cracked and craggy frostbitten heart.

That’s the solution. That’s the key to my ice fortress. That’s my route out of the labyrinth I generate specifically to stay lost in because it keeps the outside world at bay. It’s the map I need to step off the endless tundra within into the Southlands of my soul.

I know this now. And God willin’, I will not forget. That will not be easy. This is exactly the sort of thing my mind rejects, buries, and spins up a host of demons and complications and other diversions so I can distract myself long enough to forget where it lies. It does this because this knowledge threatens to upset the existing order.

But I have full conscious knowledge of what I need to do, and armed with that, I can fight. I can use my sledgehammer of rage to crush and destroy the machinery of my self-defeat. I can use the sword of my incisive intellect to cleave my demons in twain. And I can use the sunshine in my soul to melt the ice around my heart and bring a much-delayed spring to the Northlands of my heart.

The world’s really not such a bad place, you know. It’s full of bright, warm things that make your soul feel good. You just have to lower the drawbridge and let them in.

C’mon in, everybody. There’s food and drink and every kind of sex inside.

All I ask is that you don’t break anything.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Had my first production meeting with my film group today. It did not go well, at least from my point of view.

Today, I had Producing for Writers class, aka  “Here’s some money, now fuck off” class. From today onward, every class will be half instruction and half production meeting with our teams. I like this, it makes sure we get together at least once a week and, to be honest, I would rather be in a production meeting than attending a lecture. Erk.

So in the first half of the class, the lecture part, I was stoked. I had all these ideas I wanted to contributed and I had already figured out what roles I could fill in the production and was imagining myself as the focused executive type who run things with a Picard-like efficiency and sweeps the others off their feet with my judgment and wisdom.

I consider myself to be a natural executive, as are many other INTJ types. We can make decisions rapidly, handle the big picture with ease, keep a big system in our heads (as long as we designed it) and we are independent of mind enough to make the tough decisions that benefit the system as a whole and thereby the people in it.

So I had built up quite a picture of how it was going to go down by the time the meeting actually came around. I would smoothly and unobtrusively assert control, get everyone on the same page, and sort out who has to do what, when, and where.

I knew I could be a  great asset when it came down to coordinating, planning, organizing, communication, and so on. I can handle paperwork and budgets and forms and big huge documents with everything in them and all that kind of thing.

I figured that those would be the sort of things that none of my fellow artsy people would want to touch with an eleven foot stick, and so the role would be mine, uncontested.

But obviously, that’s not how it worked out. To my surprise, when we were handing out the jobs, another member of my group spoke up and claimed my positions, and I was too stunned to object, so boom, there goes my role.

And I was not really suited for any of the other roles. And when they/we were deciding those other roles, people, as usual, totally forgot I existed, so it’s not like anyone said “Michael, can you do that?” to me.

Even in my stunned state, I would have know to say “yes”. No matter what it was.

So now I feel excluded and walled off in my own film group. The only job I got was craft services, which I can totally do, but I can’t help but think of as a waste of my talents when I could be doing so much more.

And I can’t shake the feeling that I never stood a chance. That the whole thing was programmed against me from the start, including the fact that the first meeting was announced on such short notice that there was absolutely no chance I could attend.

These people never planned to include me at all, and if they let me do anything at all, it’s out of pity. I could be an incredible asset to them, but they don’t know that or don’t care.

Well fuck them, then. I’ll do my job and contribute at meetings (assuming they listen to me at all, which is improbable) but it’s clear the clique has already formed and I am not part of it, so I officially don’t give a shit about the project any more.

They don’t want me, they don’t get me. It basically means I have to do very little work on production day – in fact, they strongly hinted that I don’t even need to show up. So fuck these people. If it wouldn’t get me in trouble, I would leave them all to hang in the breeze without my strength, wisdom, and forethought to help them.

And one day they will look up and shout “Save us!” and I’ll look down and whisper, “No.”

Not really. I am too Canadian for that, and therefore I am unable to knowingly let down the team. I am also too aware of the world and my responsibilities within it to do that. I would swallow my pride and help if they came to me.

But they probably won’t.

I swear to God, though, that some day I am going to force the world to value me. Hopefully in large denominations, and plenty of them. I haven’t even tapped into a tenth of my potential yet. I have powers I don’t even know I have yet. And I am capable of great growth if given even a tiny amount of encouragement.

So far, I have not gotten said encouragement in sufficient quantity. I know from my teachers that I am pretty damned good at writing. I don’t need the approval or inclusion of my classmates in order to do my job.

One day, someone is going to give me a chance to shine, and I will knock their fucking socks off with all my creative and pragmatic powers. I’m a greater writer, plus I have all kinds of other skills that could benefit others to an astounding degree.

And I’ll tell you this : my fellow students are going to notice a subtle difference in me from now on. I will still be friendly and civil, but a glass wall is going up between me and them from now on. I am tired of trying to fit in and get along. I am officially doing my own thing now, and if it happens to benefit others, great.

If people want to connect with me, it will be on my own terms. Otherwise, that wall is not coming down for any reason. I am my own beast now.

And some day, by God, I will shake the very heavens with my power.

Until then, I will keep my thunder to myself.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.