Uhgn. Waiting.

Uhng. Travel is real bad for my anxiety. And I’m on the queue this week, which makes work feel extra urgent.

My flight out of SEA is delayed before I even check in, enough to miss my connection to CLE. So I’m overnight somewhere to get there reliably tomorrow, and I picked Detroit because that’s the shortest flight and in the same timezone. Plus it puts me in the Seattle airport for an extra couple of hours. My anxiety gets a little better once I’m inside security, because scrutiny goes down, but it’s still hard for me to ignore the authoritarianism that plauges air travel even when it’s less intense than it is on a plane. So many people who can fuck up my day just because I won’t or can’t specifically comply with their dumb order, even if I support their goal. Where there are so many people in general, each leaking their emotions at me. Distressed people, many of whom wouldn’t bother protecting me from their feelings even I they weren’t hangry and tied.

And the waiting. There’s so much waiting in my life, even without flight delays. It makes it hard to imagine my actual life is happening sometimes; easy to feel like I have to keep pushing through until finally things are safe or done or whatever makes it fucking stop.

It’s not that I don’t like what’s happening. Most days I’m pretty happy with how most things go. But it’s easy to feel detached from it – from myself – when waiting is a big part of my life. There are so many things I am so patient about. Waiting for Shanda¹I don’t mean to criticize any of you; this is about me. I appreciate you being here and letting me rant at you, and for all the other things you do. I just wish I knew how talk about myself in a way that wasn’t so hard on everyone all the time. I wish I could figure out how to not be in this place I’ve been I for so long – … Continue reading to stop being triggered by the existence of my emotion. The one I carefully showed you because I needed help with it. But first we have to do yours, because seeing mine triggers your own trauma, and now you need help feeling safe before anything else can happen. So I wait, holding on to my problem, pushing back my emotion, trying to help with yours. Trying not to be hurt when you tell me – argue with me – about how I’m the cause of this pain and if only I could need less and notice you less it wouldn’t have to exist. If only I stayed away and didn’t share so much you could finally be happy.

And I wait for M²See previous footnote to feel safe enough to share. Or interested enough. Or whatever it is I never quite produce. All the while making you feel picked at by my relentless attempts to connect, or misheard when I guess wrong at what might help, or mistreated when even the offer of help feels oppressive.

Or all the waiting I do imagining I might eventually acclimate someone to my life through things like The Screed, hoping that maybe with repetition I can find a way to not be so overwhelming to everyone³See previous footnote around me, or at least build up their tolerance. Hoping that someday I’ll be normal enough to get to the part where I ask for help and feel connected before everyone feels like I’m too asking too much.

So that’s happening.

The day job is not great today either. I’m back on the queue this week and am staring in the hole, with several cases from last week that no one handled. I could bitch about it but that’s often as much work as just doing it myself (and only sometimes successful). I picked up at least as many SRs as I can work this week and there are still half a dozen in the queue. I’m told that the new Indian RDT group can handle some of them but I’m sure I’ll have to babysit those for almost as much work as doing them would be. I feel a little better about work after stopping in the office for a minute this morning, but it still feels like a thing that will stress me all week. In a week that already had plenty to keep me busy. I’m trying to remember that my anxiety isn’t really about work, or at least mostly isn’t, but that’s weak reassurance against my desire to panic.

I should be better about teaching people to share in the way I want. I know it’s not easy when you’ve got a lifetime of hiding. I know all about hiding and the fake safety is offers. About the way not sharing seems like the only thing that will protect you. I want to complain that the best way to learn is to simply do it, and that’s true, but I know sounds dismissive. I know the disconnect is not a lack of gracious intent but a broader understanding of the reasons for and harms of sharing. And I should try to address that, if I ever want people to meet me here. It’s what I have been trying. Trying and tweaking and challenging whenever I have a new thought on how to make it go. But maybe this more comprehensive view will help me know something new.

So maybe… 

Step 1: Imagine that you’d like to know how you react to the things that happen in your life. Not that you walk around oblivious all the time, just that we all need to make space for introspection because the places we need it most are least likely to provide it. Imagine that the person you’re sharing with is yourself.

Step 2: Do step 1 in real time, instead of hours or days later (or never, like we often do). I don’t mean that you should interrupt your day every time you have a reaction, just that you could imagine that you want to think about the situation again later, and process your feelings about it more carefully or with a different perspective or just when you feel different than you do right now. It’s much eaiser to come back to a feeling or thought later if you make that your intent when it first occurs. It’s much easier to share of you already have a list by the time you get around to doing it.

Step 3: Imagine that one of the ways you can better understand your own life is by attempting to explain it to others. That one of the ways you can remember to think about yourself and have your feels is to share them with someone else. Even if you don’t technically get to the sharing bit, thinking about how other people would react can be very useful, to help quiet your internal fears and see yourself a bit more kindly.

And now maybe my brain can be quiet for a minute so I can eat and have some more book. If I Was Your Girl is better than I expected and I’m excited to get through it.

ZiB

— 
Sent from a phone.