I am painfully shy, and often feel completely lost and alienated in common social situations. I dread having to interact with people I don’t know without sufficient lead time. I need lots of lead-up time before I am ready to meet new people with something like a workable amount of equanimity.
And I am all about the equanimity.
And yet, I can also be extremely charismatic, especially when I am possessed by an idea or feel the need to express an emotion. I am capable of putting out of a very warm, happy, soothing vibe, and if I could just get over myself enough for that side of me to become dominant, I could be one heck of a guy.
As it stands, usually it’s only the very sensitive (or the very patient) who can tune out the noise of my awkward, anxious nature and tune in on my good vibe station.
On a good day, I can see myself as a really wonderful person temporarily distorted by mental and physical illness into operating on a much lower level than that which is my normal, natural level, and any day now, I will rise from my own ashes and get back to living the life I was meant to lead.
On a bad day, I see myself as nothing but a toxic and obnoxious unlovable lump of disgusting putrid slime whose only contribution to the world is to make it a worse place by being in it and drawing good people down into my poisonous morass to choke and drown, a victim of their own pity.
Most days are somewhere in between.
I tried to get my blogging done in the afternoon so I could spend the whole evening working on my series proposal for TV Pilot class. Really I did.
But stuff happened. Like sleep. Turns out, I can fall into the black hole of sleep while dressed as well. All it takes is the slightest excuse – like the sleepiness I often get after a bowel movement, in this case – and off I go, hiding from reality in sleepy time land again.
It’s so easy just to turn off my jets and let gravity do the rest. I get so tired of fighting the flow. Tired of absolutely everything seeming like I’m fighting uphill in the freezing rain.
Clearly, I still have a lot to learn about opening myself up to the world and looking for what I need in it instead of being sealed off and starving all the fucking time.
Were my life a comedy, this would be the point where I would meet my manic pixie boy who teaches me to loosen up, be spontaneous, trust my instincts, and enjoy life. In return, I would teach him restraint, responsibility, and forethought.
Our “pushing apart” scene that must be in every rom-com would be a big argument where we both have second thoughts about the other person’s lessons. He’d accuse me of being a boring person trying to smother his spirit and I would accuse him of being an out of control lunatic trying to destroy my life. He’d run off, and I would realize just how much I love him and chase him down someplace cute and quirky , like at a cotton candy store or a hipster antique shop full of old typewriters and non-prescription glasses.
And seeing as this is a gay rom com, I see it ending with brunch with all our friends.
The strange thing is, writing that was very easy for me. The ideas flow from the origin point and click together like Lego pieces. It would be hard for me to write it any other way, which may become a problem in my professional life some day. Makes it hard to change my mind, at least at first.
Once I have some distance from the process of creation, I can see what does and does not work and make changes, though I still need a lot of outside help in order to get over the gumption swamp of self-evaluation.
Maybe I am just too softhearted to be my own editor. I don’t want to hurt myself by unleashing the brutal truth machine that is my analytical mind on something that will always feel very much like a part of me.
Which, when you think about it, is so fucked up it would require the invention of thirteen new dimensions just to describe it mathematically.
Apparently, I am terrified of what I will do to myself.
And it’s entirely justified. Like in Silence Of The Lambs, when Clarisse Starling asks Hannibal Lecter, “Why don’t you turn that high-powered perception on yourself?”.
Because, of course, when you do it to yourself, it hurts. Plus you get all kinds of bizarre identity feedback events going on, and you are lost in the backwash almost before you start. Examining the thing you are examining with has always been tricky.
Something something quantum.
Plus, analyzing others is fun, especially if you can freak people out and display your eldritch might by diving things about them via a complex series of mostly-intuitive deductions. Call it the Sherlock Holmes trick.
Being an INTJ, though, I can’t always explain it like the INTP Holmes can. Like I said, it’s mostly intuitive and can seem a lot like I am reading people’s mind or futures when all I am doing is thinking on a higher level.
I suppose to the outside observer, that’s more or less the same thing. Either way, they don’t know how I am doing it and wouldn’t understand it if I try to explain it,
Ergo, it is magic. Magic is an emotion, a sense of wonder (and/or terror) in the presence of a power greater than you can comprehend. Our (thankfully) rational age means that an actual belief in magic – as a force that somehow has power in the world without having to follow its laws – is logically untenable.
But the feeling of magic will always survive.
All it takes is something to awake the sense of wonder in us, and all that requires is forces that have a powerful and impressive effect on the world coupled with our inability to fully encompass the emotional impact in the limited vessel of our reason.
And all you need is fireworks for that.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.