It’s hard to reach out. Even for just a second, and then it gets even harder when the flesh meet. Will I pull back? Flinch and throw myself into a corner while in panic try to construct walls out of anything nearby? Mostly there’s a flinch, and the brain struggles to maintain control and keep some sort of an appearance up. On a good day, that glimpse of panic beneath the mask is only peripheral. There have been days when a goodbye was said with a handshake and not a hug. Walls.

And then there are the deeper issues. If it’s not casual but more intimate and that with people one don’t even know, at least not well or in some cases hardly at all. How do one do that? I don’t mean a how-to list about how to con people emotionally thank you very much. No, I’m amazed that people can do this as I lack the skill socially. How to let strangers come close physically, it’s… There’s the walls, and flinch, and panic, and self-loathing, and insecurities, and uneasiness with touching strangers, and especially them touching me. And yet. And yet the craving of closeness, comfort and well belonging is there. (Could’t come up with another word on C? No.) It’s hard to combine these, so everything needs to be there behind the walls where they don’t try and kill each other.

Being shy and suffering from cynically naïvety has its effects. I get bewildered and befuddled and other words that begins with be- often. It might also have its source in odd socialisation skills since I don’t really get much of why people do hat they do. Or how to act always. “You should try my socks, they keep the toes warm” at a restaurant and then trying to take of the shoes and socks — that’s not approved for some reason.

Another thing this brings with itself is that I crush very easily.¹ Of course this brings a whole other level of problems. Not to mention mumbling and averting eyes. I also don’t read signals so it’s a double fuck.

_{1) Nature of crushes may vary. Some are creative, some are smarts, some are platonic, and some they just make stuff in the chest ache. My favourite are those that somehow incorporate everything but the platonic. Seriously, despite the ache and worry those really are the best. They don’t happen that often though, and considering how draining thay can be that’s a good thing.}

Getting the knee x-rayed had a few components of awkward. Due to the thickness of the thighs — I’m not the slimmest person around — the jeans couldn’t be folded up so I had to lie there in my underpants and this was combined with a Damn Cute™ technician. She had glasses and pigtails and a sense of humour and everything. So an overtly self-concious person — me — had to lie there and try and just ignore everything. I think I appeared to be kind of dimwitted.

Who knew reality could be so much like Scrubs?

Not only did waking up ruin the good night’s sleep, it also brought something else: nosebleed. For most people I think this is not such a big problem but with a runny allergic nose I sat there afraid to bleed to death.

Slowly feel it drift away and not be able to do a thing. Should I blow my nose to get rid of the snot and open the wound more? Or should I try to keep it as a wall, build up the blood inside so that it doesn’t escape? Oh, shit, some of it dropped on my hand. Red. Dizzy. Yeah, dying?

“Am I dizzy because of the blood loss or because I can see my own blood?” is a really horrible question to ask oneself. (The answer of course is almost always the later, thankfully.) To die from something like this does seem rather silly but the fear was real. Sadly.

1929

When I look back, I’ve probably had bouts with depression since I was nine-ten or  so. There was signs of panic attacks and I skipped school quite a bit. Of course, I’ve been the silent type and just got on somehow. “Accepting” is probably a good word for it, but maybe not. Perhaps “bottling up” fits better, at least on the later parts. I’ve been on medication for only two years, and while the anxieties have loosened up quite a bit they’re still there wreaking havoc.

The mind doesn’t go as dark anymore (there are no scars on the body, but that’s because I’ve got a slight phobia against seeing my own blood) but the self-doubt, the worthlessness, the days when everything conspire against me as a laughing megalomaniac — they’re still there. At first it might look like a small rock on the road, easily avoided or why not, just run over it. Only when it’s right up in the face, the rock turns out to be the Thing and he’s in a clobbin’ time mood. So instead of running over or evade, one ends up on the side of the road, fifteen feet back and with the head bleeding in a ditch. 

There are days when the bed holds me hostage, and there are days when a scream doesn’t have more force and loudness than a whimper. All this is worse when friends are few and far between. Some where far between — it’s not like I can walk for five minutes and knock on a door.

I might be talking out of my ass, but I assume it would have been easier if it would have been far more brief than it was or is. It’s hard to find a path back when there’s hardly any path to begin with. This is very apparent socially.

This is instead of this week’s GPOYW.

In the place I grew up, the school only had the first six years so it’s rather small. One of the two buildings held the kitchen, gym-class and a bath. All in all it was shaped like a T, but the bar was longer and held the classrooms. Okay, this is how it looked:

When I was about eleven there wasn’t really much to do at the breaks, so we used to go around the building with the classrooms and talk. One day, me and a friend was out walking when he saw some other kids play at the site marked X on the drawing. I had seen two assholes go there to earlier so when he suggested we’d go there I said “no, I don’t feel like it” and I explained why. He said “no, it will be ok.” I still protested and he walk overthere anyway. I contined around route A.

Next round I heard him shout for me to come over. I was sceptical to the whole thing but I went there along route B. And sure enough, the assholes were there too, grabbed my arms and punched me in the stomach. Again. You’d think they’d learnt some new tricks after a while because aft the first years of being beaten up, it had gotten a bit stale. Sure, it hurt and I cried, but really, this lack of new material was embarrassing to all of us.

Then they left and my friend didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with what he had done. That was the last time I spent some time with him without any of our shared friends. What a cowardly idiot he was.

This, in part, is why I have a problem with being a follower as well as being the person who drag people along. Also: issues with physical contact.