First up, sorry there was no blog entry yesterday. As usual, my poor time management skills are to blame. Well, that, and having therapy in the afternoon and hanging out with my friends in the evening.
Tonight should be interesting. A bunch of us from the Secret Informant gang are meeting at a restaurant here in Richmond called Uncle Lu’s for a casual meal and a chance to bond.
I am pickled tink that I have a chance to mingle and maybe make up for not going to the shoot. I am going to do my best to be extra sparkly and try to be a fun as I can without putting too much pressure on myself and giving myself an apoplexy.
I went through a bad cycle about it yesterday. In a Facebook chat window, I asked the group when and where the dinner was going to be. And it took a long time for someone to finally tell me.
Plenty of time for my paranoia to start to work and makes me feel like this was it, they were not telling me because they had decided to get rid of me and didn’t want to get into a whole “thing” by telling me yet. I was going to end up rejected again, pushed out, and it would be my fault for being such a loser.
Those were the thoughts and feelings going through my head yesterday. I know they are crazy but they happened anyway. I am hyper paranoid about rejection and exclusion and getting left behind.
It’s happened. That’s the thing. So my worries were crazy but not entirely unfounded. Tghat’s what happens to the kid that doesn’t fit in. They become a foreign object in the social body of the group, the one person who hasn’t bonded and become tuned to the same channel as the others, and that can spell doom.
I have reached the point, finally, where I am at least willing to entertain the thought of allowing my identity to become immersed into a group. I think I can stifle my paranoia and anxiety long enough to open myself up to the experience. Let my guard down and take things as they come without all my bells and alarms ringing in my head.
I hope that’s all it takes, because if not, I have no idea what to do I lack the “making friends” skill. Socially speaking, I am way, way behind. Socially retarded, one might say. And so I’ve never actively made a friend in my life.
If I get friends, it’s by accident,. not design. Sad but true.
I hope it’s possible to fix my broken social antenna. The jury is out on that. Those monkeys raised in isolation int eh infamous Harlow study never got better, as far as I know. They remain freaked out by other monkeys for the rest of their lives, and never stopped reacting to attempts at befriending them as if they were personal attack.
I can relate.
I had a low blood sugar incident (LBSI) a few days ago. It was, of course, awful.
It’s true that I had been undereating. It’s something I can’t seem to stop myself from doing despite the risks. After an LBSI, I am good for a while, but eventually the fear fades and I forget and then the stage is set for the next one.
I have thought about why I do this to myself, and what I have found is that I get a feeling of pleasure from self-denial. It makes me happy to deny myself food and thus save money by making my supplied last longer. Makes me feel tough and strong and clever.
So that’s the mental impulse I need to stop. The next time I feel that way, I will stop myself and remind myself that this is exactly how I get into trouble.
In other words, it’s dumb.
The LBSI came upon me suddenly, as usual. I had been playing Witcher Three for a while when I decided I should probably get up to get some water and something to eat.
The moment I stood up, I started to shake while sweating profusely. Either of those by themselves might be harmless, but when they happen together, it can only mean that my body is freaking out over low blood sugar and stuff is starting to malfunction.
So once more, I had to marshal my situationally limited mental capacity in order to do what was needed to save my fucking life.
And it was bad. I had already been tired and sleepy before I got up, so my mental capacity was already somewhat diminished. Then the LBSI hits and suddenly I am almost completely incoherent.
Luckily, I inherited my father’s ability to be calm in a crisis, so I was able to go to the kitchen and grab an apple and a bottle of fruit juice.
The fruit juice was particularly inspired. I had been wishing there was some kind of sugar drink around for rapid short term treatment of the problem, but then I thought, “Wait…. fruit juice has fructose!” and that would have to do.
What followed was me sitting in the living room,. roboticly eating an apple and drinking the fruit juice, soaked in sweat and waiting for the world to stop vibrating.
Eventually, the food and drink to effect and I was able to go back to the kitchen and make myself a more substantial snack and through it, struggle back to normalcy.
So yeah. Another brush with death. For no other reason that I neglected to eat. I can’t even say I forgot. No, I chose not to in order to get that little thrill.
I really want to break these bad circuits in my brain. The ones that encode a whole system of response that is highly self-destructive. And yet, because they have been reinforced by repetition for so long, they are the easiest thoughts to think.
They are the path of least resistance.
And the path of least resistance sucks.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.