Exploring the Rabbit Hole

I lieu of ranting at the internet about politics with poor writing and most likely flawed logic, as my last couple of posts have done, I thought I'd return to what makes this blog great*, Imaginary Readers: complaining about my perceived emotional problems. Because there's nothing quite so cathartic as talking about my (probably imaginary) issues on a blog no one reads. (For the record, I am only partly joking there. It is actually incredibly cathartic, and I'm kind of glad no one reads it, otherwise many awkward conversations would occur.)

Lately I've been having a little bit of insomnia, nothing to write home about, but enough trouble falling asleep to annoy me and make it that much more difficult for me to break my current habit of spending too much money on Starbucks. I suspect that it has to do with stress, because I've been super busy the past couple of weeks with my latest round of midterms and inane math assignments, and as the end of the semester approaches, my motivation to get stuff done wanes and the amount of things I have to do increases exponentially. This equates to much stress, which leads me losing ground in my war against my acne and some bouts of insomnia. I have to say, though, that it is very manageable insomnia, because mostly it seems to manifest as my not being able to shut my brain off for long enough to actually fall asleep. This belays a larger issue I have wherein I can never quite manage to shut my brain off. I can't not think, which wouldn't be an issue so much if the part of my brain that I can't turn off wasn't the part that seems to be directly keyed into my anxieties.

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I should specify here that for me there are two distinct ways of not being able to not think, both of which I encounter. The first is the issue of not thinking and just feeling; being in tune with my body. This is a useful skill when doing physical things for enjoyment/pleasure such as dancing or having sex. Considering the former, I continue to attempt to enjoy dancing, because I figure it might be an acquired taste that I just haven't quite acquired yet, like beer which I almost like, but I still only enjoy it for about an hour at most, after which my brain kicks in with a near constant commentary of boredom, foot pain, and a general feeling of awkwardness. Dancing is fraught with self-consciousness for me, and while I try to ignore it, because I don't want my insecurities to control me, I have yet to have an experience dancing that has given me any confidence or made me enjoy the pure feeling of it, as I gather that's what makes it fun. My research into the phenomenon of dancing as a socio-sexual exercise is ongoing; no conclusions have yet been reached. As for sex, in my limited though existent experience, I have yet to be able to separate myself from my brain for long enough to just feel it and enjoy it. Granted, mostly I just end up thinking something along the lines of 'Holy shit, I'm having sex right now,' but that usually (granted 'usually' in this context is about twice) devolves into 'and now I'm thinking about it. Should I be thinking about it? I should stop thinking about it...and I'm still thinking about it.' Drinking doesn't really help with the not thinking, in any context, because when I drink I'm just more likely to say and do what I'm thinking. Alcohol, at least in the moderate amounts that I have ingested, only peels away the first layer of the big ball of neuroses wrapped in inhibitions that is me, but it doesn't actually dampen the thinking aspect of it (at least that I've noticed, but it is difficult to compare, because when you're drunk its impossible to imagine being sober and when you're sober it's impossible to imagine being drunk; and I'm still not sure what counts as "buzzed" and/or "tipsy"; it's all very subjective and relative.)

The second issue of not being able to not think is not being able to shut my anxieties off. Now I understand that nobody, at least that I've talked to, can really decide to not be anxious, and I am somewhat of an anxious person, and I'm not saying that I strive to never be anxious, because anxiety is evolutionarily beneficial and as a human being, I will always have some anxiety. I would also like to clarify at this point that I don't think that I'm anxious in an uptight way, but rather in a worst-case scenario/hypochondriac way. I also recognize that I also probably don't have an actual anxiety disorder, because I don't think that it is so severe that it controls me in any way that I can't deal with, but I do have a tendency to fret about things and I have anxious moments, where I worry about something that has very little possibility of actually happening and I realize that it won't happen, but I can't help but worry about it. It seems to be related to how much sleep I get.

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Anyways, the frustrating part of it is the way that the part of my brain that is always on is also the part that will go down the rabbit hole of worst case scenarios at the slightest provocation. This seems to manifest most often lately with respect to social things, and my friends in particular. I'm not used to have close friends, as outside of sort of/kind of [Princess Leia Vampire] in middle school I've never really had any close friends before. And now, all of the sudden (as of the last year), I have about three different people who I would consider myself really close to (for me at least), and I have no frame of reference for how to deal with that. Because of that, combined with my general feeling that I lack basic social skills and the fact that now that I have friends I am terrified of losing them, every encounter with a friend that leaves me feeling less than stellar for whatever reason is immediately spun into a narrative of how this is going to destroy said relationship. And sometimes it's not even a valid reason, for example, a text that doesn't get answered because it doesn't need to be, or I say/so something that later I worry came off wrong (this is somewhat common because I have yet to figure out that I can't actually convey tone via text message). Usually (probably always, but I can't be sure) it's not a big deal, because either it's completely in my head or they know me well enough to know what I meant or not care. I'd like to think that the relationships I've built in the last year or so are stronger than the sheer force of my perceived idiocy, and given what some of them have withstood I have fairly good evidence that they are, but I can't help but worry about it. Every time I don't hear from someone for a while, or I we have a truncated conversation for whatever reason, or there's an uncomfortable silence it must be my fault for some reason I don't yet know, or some horribly stupid reason that I've managed to come up with, and it must inevitable lead to us never speaking again or something of that nature. I know that none of that is true, because I do realize when it is just my anxiety speaking, but that little irrational part of my brain usually wins the argument and I have to force myself not to freak out because I'm being an idiot and of course it's not a big deal. That's how friendship or any interpersonal relationship works: while you hope that it's generally good, it isn't always, but hopefully an awkward moment or someone being in a less than stellar mood doesn't matter.

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Also, sometimes I decide for no apparent reason that something has happened to someone and I worry about it until I have verification that they are fine. It's never that specific, nor is there usually a reason, and I don't ask if they're okay because then I would sound crazy, because it's crazy. 'What if...' is possible the worst thought I can have because it usually means that my imagination is about to take me down an insane path of things that I don't want to think about, realize would never happen, and can't help but worry about. At least it's usually something plausible like car accident or appendicitis and not something completely unrealistic like terrorist attack (at least in this part of the world on a per capita basis) or flesh eating bacteria. When I was little, if my parents went out I would stay awake in my room until they came home because I was worried that they would die in a car accident or something. I still get worried if someone is late by more than a reasonable amount.

The point being that my default setting seems to be to go right to the worst-case scenario, and the best I can do sometimes when it happens is to recognize that I'm being irrational and tell my brain to shut-up because it's being an idiot. It doesn't always happen, and it seems to be tied to my mood/the amount of sleep I've been getting/whether or not it's a Tuesday/what my expectations for said encounter were/a variety of other factors. I don't always want to think, but I can't seem to shut it off, but I shouldn't complain, there are worse things than my mild to moderate anxiety issues. There could be an uncontrolled fire in my immediate (or not so immediate) vicinity, but that's a completely different rabbit hole...

*I really only used the asterisk for visual effect and to make a sarcastic point, but I hate it when people don't carry asterisks through, so I had to put something down here for the not statistically significant number of you that saw it and immediately scrolled down to the bottom to see what it referred to. (If you did actually immediately scrolled down to see it, you win at this blog and have bragging rights until the next arbitrary competition.)