Okay, here’s the situation.

My parents went away on a week’s vacation…

OK, not really. The situation is this : tonight, at around 10:30 pm, the witty and wonderful Felicity will pick me up to go hang out with us two and Joe at Felicity’s parents’ place, where we will watch videos, eat McDonalds, and chill.

This is our routine for Monday and Friday nights. We have done this for ages.

And yet, as the T-hour approaches, I am becoming increasingly anxious. And that’s insane. I know that I will be happy and have a good time there. I always am and I always do. It’s a no-brainer.

And yet, it feels like something horrible is coming and time is running out. I am experiencing not just anxiety but terror and dread as well. I feel like I am in one of those scenes where the hero has to defuse the bomb and the timer is running down. Loudly.

I hate those scenes.

So what the hell, anxiety? What is so bad about what is coming? Why to I have to go through this shit every single time I am going to go out? Why is freaking out so freaking common for me?

I don’t have a single, definitive answer. But I do have theories.

Of course I have theories.

The foremost among them has to do with treating time as an asset and why that seemingly normal and sane thing to do can actually be poisonous to me.

See, the problem is that the mental variable “time left until the thing” has a value that can only go down.   And for someone as acutely (over)sensitive to loss as I am, that is a frigging nightmare.

Because no matter what I do, the value can only decrease. And that makes me feel like I am losing something precious all the time, and that freaks me the fuck out.

On a deep level, my mind (unfortunately) registers loss as failure and so every time I look at the clock and there is less time left, a very broken and fucked up part of my mind thinks that means I am failing – screwing up – and boom goes my depression as well.

This is, quite clearly, total insanity.

But it’s what I am, for the moment, stuck with.

If I could just redefine that idiotic variable to be something other than an asset in my mind, I could nip this whole psychosis in the bud.

But I can’t see that happening, because it IS an asset. It’s the quantity of minutes I have to do whatever I want before having to pull myself together to be with others.

And perhaps that is the dreaded tragedy of it all. My mind doesn’t like having to leave this cozy mental plane of mine where it is nice and dispersed and hazy and ephemeral in order to fit back into the box known as “being a functional human being” and responds to the looming prospect with terror and dread.

Perhaps that is what agoraphobia is really about, or at least, what mine is really about. The world outside is so radically different from the world at home. It’s so much more stimulating, both physically and psychologically, .as well as socially, and when I am Out There, I have to raise my defenses and be alert and hold myself together despite the onslaught of stimulation, and all of that can be very hard on me.

So much easier to be a puddle of goo on a computer back home, where it’s safe and I don’t have to hold myself together or deal with life at all.

I can just sit here feeding my mind all the stimulation it craves and regulate my own mood via taking a nap when my background anxiety level gets too high and keep myself safely distracted from all the chaos, pain, and horror inside me.

Which gets worse over time because I never actually deal with it.

But hey, why deal with it when I  can always escape via video games n’ shit?

That is exactly how addiction always works. Whatever your motivations are for getting clean, they have to contend with the knowledge that no matter how bad the addiction makes your life,  you can escape it via the addiction.

And giving in to the addiction is always so much easier than fighting it.

Not better. Just easier.

And always doing what is easier, regardless of what is better, is the very definition of being a wimp. Of lacking character. Of being a loser. 

I understand that quite clearly now.

So here I sit, helplessly watching my anxiety levels rise and knowing that at some point, I am going to have to coalesce into a solid and walk around like I’m people.

But I’m not people. Not really. I am, at best, a slightly successful charlatan who can simulate being a normal functional human being in a very limited number of super easy low stimulus situations.

I can feel what is missing in me. I know that I have enormous blank spots where other people have normal human emotions. I can feel those gaps like they are vast open wounds. I know that, deep down, there is something fundamentally wrong with me  and there always has been, and people can tell so they avoid me.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to pretend to be one of them well enough to fit in, but it never works. I might as well be a giraffe trying to pass as a woodchuck. I am not fooling anybody and so the whole thing is wasted effort.

Maybe I would be better off if I called off the charade entirely, and just faced the world as the emotionally bizarre mutant I really am.

If I am lucky, the fact that I am charming and personable and sweet will be enough for people to tolerate how wrong I am.

But even if they don’t, it would be a huge relief to not have to tapdance so fast any more. To just be me without modulation or modification.

I don’t know that I have the courage.

But it’s a mighty fine idea.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.