The Same Old Thing

I was talking with my mom one time about her friend who was having troubles with panicking. This friend I guess would get overwhelmed in a way that made her freeze up in a situation and unable to do anything. And I mean that, the difference between having a moment of panic and being a panicker is wide. Everyone has moments where they're not sure what to do. I'll tell you about mine in a moment. But a panicker will panic for no reason, and be unable to do anything. A panicker will be holding a piece of toast and for no reason at all, will freak out, and can't eat it, can't put it down, can't do anything except freeze, and freak the fuck out. And most importantly, they have trouble going, "I'm panicking right now, for no reason, and I can make myself stop." In that moment, it's hard for them to step back in that way. I told my mom, "I've never had that problem, I never seem to panic." She said, "we're not panickers. We're obsessers."

Boy, she couldn't be more right. It seems I spend every waking moment over-thinking every other one. It's just my way. And it's comfortable. In analyzing a moment, I feel in control. I feel like I can understand anything if I just have the time to look at it and think it over. This has an interesting effect on my waking life: whenever I have moments that didn't go my way, conversations in which I didn't accomplish what I wanted to, events that didn't turn out as I had planned, I cannot help but feel that it was because I was unprepared for them. Is this correct, or just a feeling due to my obsessive nature? To me, that's an interesting question. Regardless, this in turn makes me analyze such events even more vigorously, and attempt to alter my following actions to see how the situation changes. And there's problems with that: my perception of a situation is inherently limited to what I think, hope and fear. It is all of those things at once, and reason is rarely the predominant force. More often than not, fear is a major silent partner with hope, supposition, superstition, and despair. Here's a case in point of why that's a problem.

I've been seeing this girl for the past couple of weeks. I of course met her on the internet, so insert your cynicism here. Trust me, my views tend to see it as an unlikely lottery too, except instead of spending money I'm spending time and energy. Her name is Kendall, and yes I'm saying her name because in ten years it won't matter one way or the other. You're not getting her last name so I figure, irrelevant. I guess I'll wait to see if this burns me before I change my thoughts. I don't want to have to explain this later because I've already detracted too far from my post.

I use the term 'seeing' almost literally: I've seen her a couple of times, and I attribute that to a couple of things. First of all, I'm intimidated by her on a certain level. A romantic intimidation. This is not unique to her in my life certainly, but this is the strongest it has ever been. She has inspired moments of panic in me that have no place being there. Travis was around the first day I met her, it was a street art show in Oakland; she was with a friend, I was with a friend. I was kind of stiff but I was also a fish out of water. The truth is that I'm not used to just organically meeting girls, divorced from the obvious agenda that a date entails. I just ran into this girl like I could any girl on the street, and how we spent our time together, I could have spent with any other person there. And this was foreign to me. Now, maybe the art show added an extra element that I was unaccustomed to; I am not anti-social but handling a large crowd is not my strength either. What threw me off was I had no opportunity to be 'on': no chance to try and sell myself as (for lack of a better term) a suitable mate. And that was a good thing. I mean, I was smart enough to know to just roll with whatever was happening, even if I didn't get it in that moment.

The next time I saw her was a short time later, at her place. I watched her cook dinner and we chatted about this and that. I was mostly whimsical wordplay humor guy, because that's sort of what she brings out of me and it was working. We ended up renting the Hurt Locker (SO romantic, a bomb movie) and laid down in her bed. She cuddled up against me and once again I was feeling this anxiety. Not because she was getting close to me, I liked that a lot, and I of course wanted more. I was feeling anxious because my gentleman switch went haywire and my brain interpreted what was happening in reverse: I was getting close to her. You may or may not know about me that I have a MAJOR issue with perceiving myself to be overstepping physical bounds. I've had this dumb problem for a while, and while thankfully it only applies to the first couple weeks of a relationship, it's still there in the first place. Basically, I am terrified of the following: I will do _____ action to a girl; kiss her, touch her, fill in the blank, and she will pull away briskly and go, "What are you doing?" That thought mortifies me. I really wish I could hash out where that comes from. Anyhow, the stupidity of this situation was that I had that exact feeling of trepidation with an action I wasn't performing, and by nature of the situation would be conversely welcomed! This was a minor kick though and I welcomed her affection cautiously, although when came the chance to explore further I sort of softshoed it and (I'm fairly sure) because of that, we didn't have sex. In fact, I didn't even stay the night. She had work the next morning which I already knew, but I can't help but wonder how it might have gone differently.

Now already you can tell two things from this story that is not yet complete: first, I wasn't kidding when I said I over-think things, and I'm obviously comfortable with that thought process and sharing it. It's familiar. It's the way I am. I care about things to levels of extremity. It's just my nature. Second, I am sending poor Kendall all kinds of mixed messages (or at least, I think I am). I'm not used to things moving quickly, and this was most certainly doing that. In fact, quickly triggers suspicion, because most of the girls I've dated who moved quickly, went quickly through the entire process. But maybe it's me. Maybe the fact that I'm so in my head about all this minute bullshit puts up a wall, changes the energy, and girls decide, "Wow, I don't want to deal with this headache." Truth is I don't know, and I want to know so I can change it because this situation opened my eyes to how at least part of the problem is my subconscious inertia and energy. You don't know how you come off to other people, after all, only how you think you do. Maybe I should have just stuck my hand in her pants and saw what happened next. I did and DO want to do that, because here's something you may not know about this girl: she's fucking hot and everything I didn't do with her is exactly where my mind was the second she sat next to me. But wait, this story gets more cringe-inducing.

The third day I see her begins. Now, after a night of being affectionate, you'd think I'd greet her at her door with a kiss, or fucking something, I dunno. But no, I didn't. And worse, I saw her bristle when it didn't happen. So we sit down, she cooks dinner for herself, and we're just chatting. She realizes she needs some oil or something to continue cooking, so we walk down to the store. It's raining, I'm holding the umbrella, and she's holding onto me, who has magically turned into a robot. This is my retarded gentleman haywire again, and though I'm reciprocating, it's closed off and unsure. This is my perception of it, anyhow. Ugh, how annoying. Get over it and just fucking roll with it! I tell myself this, but was unable in that moment to put impulse to action. We get back, and she finishes cooking. She has a karaoke birfday party she needs to go to at a gay bar in Oakland and she wants to know if I want to come. Sure, sounds like fun. So I drive us down there and we head to the bar. This is just what I need. One fucking drink, that will loosen me up a mile here, because typically one drink loosens me up a bit but for some reason tonight my screws are really tight.

So of course I don't order one. I'm the driver! Like one beer makes a fucking difference. And boy do I hope an intoxicated person's perception of a stiff is not as exaggerated by alcohol as my perception of my demeanor was affected by the mood of the general group. I was agreeable certainly and not at all unpleasant. But I was also safe, septic, the kind of uninteresting person I only am when I'm trying to figure out my situation. In retrospect, this part is pretty minor because I wasn't bad, I was a little too "oh golly shucks, you guys." We drive back to her place and I go to drop her off because she needs to get to sleep for school, and fucking FINALLY I go "just kiss her you fucktard" and I do. Yay me. She tells me the next two weeks are going to be crazy because school is ending, so I may not see her. I say if she finds a spot, let me know.

This is a fair end, and one that in the ensuing week, I would needlessly over-complicate again, because when I'm feeling insecure about something I can't just sit on it and see what happens. See, I was worried about how things ended. Not because of the ending, but because of what preceded it, which added a tone of uncertainty to "busy with school." When I'm nervous about something, shadows are taller. AND I'm an excuse-teller, so I see everything as an excuse. I was afraid this was her way of slowly pulling away in the way that girls do, where it's technically over now, in this moment, but the moment extends out over days or weeks instead of just being in a statement like "Thanks but no thanks." I just felt robotic, which as you know is not my persona at all. I'm the opposite of robotic, and I'm even decent at bringing out the lively side of people. I really wanted to show this girl how comfortable I was with her personality and life because everything I saw about her I liked, and still do. She's cute, and her idiosyncrasies are frankly adorable. She licked my nose. How delightfully strange! And maybe that's where all this comes from: I genuinely like this girl, and for once because of circumstance I had to meet her on honest terms, not selling myself but just meeting her and being myself. I didn't try to impress her with some kind of intellectual discussion or be the funny fucking guy or any of the bullshit that I pull out with girls. I had no agenda. I just knew that I liked her and she seemed to like me. And that's the problem: on some stupid dysfunctional level, I'm afraid she's going to be disappointed by me in all the ways that I've been pleasantly surprised by her. It's that simple. But that dumb fear drives me to sabotage this into the same place her being unimpressed would take us.

So let me tell you about last week.

It started off with a text to her, asking her if she was at all interested in reading my writing, which up until this point we had sparsely talked about. And this was my first moment of falseness with this girl on some level: while I do want her to be interested in my writing, the offer itself in this case is disingenuous; what I want is some acknowledgment that the last time we saw each other wasn't so disappointing that you've written me off. That's what it was. And you can't just ask that, because then the person will go, "ugh, how needy are you?" Truthfully, I think we all have this level of neediness sometimes but to get around it we've entered a specific ritual into the social contract: talking about other shit. Engaging is engaging, and in bringing up what is essentially a nothing, I'm asking you to return a nothing back to signal me that yes, you've still got interest. Now here's the problem with this theory. IT'S MY FUCKING THEORY. It could be totally untrue, and while I know that more than just I subscribe to it, some people are oblivious. Some people aren't and don't care, some people disagree, and all people are busy. In essence, to restrict yourself to believing "this is the way it is" is to fall victim to interpreting the response or lack thereof you get in return as part of the same formula when it might not be. In other words, just because I texted you bullshit, does NOT mean that your lack of a reply indicates disinterest in me. Yes, I took the roundabout, overly-wordy explanation of that. That's in my fucking nature too. And that's exactly what happened: I sent a "please acknowledge me text" and got no acknowledgment. And it could be for a thousand reasons. Like, maybe she's busy with the school she told me about! This occured to me at the time but in the way that maybe Alameda will be destroyed by an earthquake occasionally occurs to me. Like the possibility is so distant, I'm only acknowledging it for the sake of showing that I was smart enough to conceive it. I've minimized the possible reality into irrelevance in my mind. And here's where the subject of dumb panic comes back again. So I don't get a reply, and I send an email, AGAIN, totally unrelated bullshit, which has nothing to do with my writing. No reply. Now at this point, you can imagine where my head is at, because I'm a pessimist. And to be fair, what makes this hard is I could totally be right. I have been right about this kind of thing before, more than once. So I also have the certainty of past experience spurring me.

And this is the part that's in my mind slightly less ridiculous because it feels like the first adult thing I've done about this feeling: I called her. And when she didn't pick up, I just left an honest message. I said basically that I felt like kind of a spaz, and I wanted to see her and show that I wasn't such a bumbly mess. Best move? No, but the first move I felt okay about, because it put me at ease, since I got my feelings out there. And if she took it or left it, at least I was straight with her about it. And then finally on the weekend or something, I can't remember now, I saw her pop up online and basically did the haven't seen you in awhile message. The conversation in my mind didn't go well, but at this point the only way to make myself feel better about it was to flesh everything out entirely. I apologized for messaging her so much, she said it didn't help, and I explained where my head was at and that I did like her and I just tried too hard to catch the ball I thought I dropped. She seemed pretty unreceptive and that actually made me feel better because now I felt like I knew where her head was at, even though it was not where I wanted it to be.

I was smart enough to not say anything for a day. I actually told myself I wouldn't say anything until around the end of the week, even if I wanted to because at this point, I've dug my six feet, this hole doesn't need to be any deeper. It is now purely up to her whether she wants to deal with a guy who has established himself as over-reactionary, uncomfortable, occasionally funny and earnest, for better or worse. And then I saw that she had a Facebook update about Scorpios being intense with a smiley face, and I am not a Scorpio, so I thought, "fuck it, just take your shot and know if it bombs" because now I felt like there's another guy and I most definitely lost out on this girl. Of course it could be absolutely nothing and of course it's up to interpretation but at this point even I'M sick of interpretation and I just want to stop thinking about this one way or the other. So I text, "Hey, are you free sometime this weekend?" which I'm 99% sure will be met with the "look, I gotta cut you loose" response. And she says, "School's out on Wednesday!!!!!" So I still have no idea where I stand, but finally I just don't worry about it one way or another. If she likes me, fucking great! And let's move forward with me finally shelving my dumb anxiety. If she doesn't, well fuck. At least I learned something about myself. I learned that dating has taught me absolutely nothing about how to handle what could legitimately be a relationship. It's so fraught with falseness and dishonest communication that it's ingrained me into a system of thought that doesn't work. And when I discard that system, I have nothing but my reactions to go by. I always kind of knew this to some degree but I didn't realize just how severe it was. And for once in a long, long fucking time, I feel like I've actually legitimately made a progressive step towards being who and what I want to be with who and what I want to be with. So ironically, as dissatisfied as I am with my performance throughout this entire thing, I'm so fucking glad it happened in such a way that I was able to break out of myself and see me in a totally different light. So thank you, Kendall, who is almost certainly not reading this, and hopefully you're just weird enough to say 'fuck it' and see how it goes from here but if not, my short fucking collection of moments with you was valuable, and I appreciate the experience immensely. Truthfully, writing this out helped me sort the entire experience, and I hadn't thought of it all in this level of detail, I just wanted to get the situation out exactly as I remember it happening for the sake of the page. So I guess I'm not nearly as obsessive as I could be. But still.

My problem remains thus: I care about everything way too much. And because of this, I erect barrier after barrier, trying to contain that so that I can function in society. I'm afraid that my intensity is too much to deal with. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but it's why I am the way I am with everything. Why when I get upset, I try to rationalize my upsetness, why things piss me off and I step away from them and force myself not to pay attention. It's why I'm a pessimist at all: I care so much about things like society and having a good life that when people and situations let me down, I have to restrain my reaction to them to be a functional person. The world is a fucked up place, and no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to change it, and I have nothing but the impetus to try. When injustice happens, I want to scream about it. my rants are just tiny bursts of what's underlying. At my core, I want to do things like set rapists on fire. When I care about someone, I just want to fully and completely embrace them with every part of myself. But I know that sweeps people away, so I contain it, divert it, restructure it as best I can. I think it affects my writing too, because I'm afraid that what I put on the page is going to be too incendiary, that it's going to hit people in ways they don't want to deal with. That it's going to hit ME in ways I don't want to deal with. In writing this post, I realized exactly where my main character's forceful personality comes from: he's me without restraint. In reality I'm paced a lot differently, but my passion for everything still peeks out like this.

It's one of the major reasons why I was initially attracted to this girl, was because she described herself as emotionally intense. But you know how it goes, a trait can be expressed a thousand ways, and can be misinterpreted in countless more.

One final thought, on love, which is the end goal of any real relationship. Love is a weakness to me, in that it's a lack of flexibility and perspective, traded off for massively intense focus. It's something I want, but having it means being utterly vulnerable in a way we all pretend to understand but honestly, I don't think any of us do. To be utterly vulnerable is to be connected to someone who can easily destroy you. That is the pinnacle of unrestrained love. It's absolute and total madness. And it doesn't work for just anyone. The closer I get to someone, the closer they get to me, and up to this point in my life, I've mashed a lot of emotion down, just for the sake of making it through the day. It can be exhausting. It IS exhausting. And this isn't my thing alone, to a certain extent we all have to play the game of how close to that madness we will let ourselves be, over time and ultimately at what point we step no further. And that's extraordinarily difficult for me because deep down inside, I want to explode in all directions, for everything around me to glow and breathe with new life and for the people around me to be carried with me in my crazy current. I wish that could work. I hope I can meet a person who shows me that it can. I understand talking about it in this way makes me look nuts, because it's the extreme end of an emotional spectrum, but it's something I definitely think about. And it makes me sound so young, I get that too. But I still feel it. It's still true about me right now, even if it won't always be. How do you reconcile that?