I have come out of whatever sadness was knocking me to my knees earlier in the week. Over the past few months I have been having a problem where I will start crying uncontrollably for no apparent reason. It happens a lot when I'm at work, and also a lot during choir practice before church. This is pretty scary. I've always been a crier, I've always been given to breakdowns, but I've also always been able to put on a brave face when needed and go let it out later. Not so much now. A few months ago I had a gigantic nonstop breakdown for a good hour or so and had to cancel a bunch of stuff I had planned for that evening. Then last Sunday I had another choir-practice breakdown and somehow for the first time did not bother to, or could not manage to, pull off hiding it. Another choir member came over and gave me a hug and reassurance, and also later emailed me some very kind words. It was incredibly nice but also made me feel very awkward and uncomfortable.
I used to always want to be the center of attention. I constantly volunteered for things like lectoring in church or reading aloud textbook passages in class. I loved theater in high school (our theater department was the tiniest and saddest thing ever, alas) and hated the times I didn't get lead roles. But somehow lately, I have gotten terribly uncomfortable with having people pay attention to me. I went to a kink party a few weeks ago -- a sort of "skill share" get-together -- and ended up stripping down to my underwear and getting bound hand and foot, blindfolded, and lightly spanked. I have never done anything remotely like this before and also barely knew anyone at the party. However, I was not nervous at all. But the part where two people were giving me their full, undivided attention, looking at me and doing things to me ... I was in terror. I had to repeatedly bite back the desire to call the whole thing off so they could go talk to or play with someone more interesting, more worthwhile, more whatever.
Where have these things come from, the crying and the desire to fade into the background? Were they always there and I've managed to clear away enough of my other crazy to unearth them? Or are they new arrivals? That kind of bums me out. I never thought I'd acquire new crazy as I got older. I assumed I'd already hit the lifetime maximum. This discomfort with online relationships is new, too, but I'm still figuring out what that actually means and how to handle it besides volunteering for a lot of stuff in real life that I end up not really wanting to do when the time arrives.
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Unrelated thought: maybe I could be a collector, and gather beautiful phrases. I only have two; I feel like you need three examples for a collection. Or is that just for a joke? We've been watching old episodes of How I Met Your Mother and it's interesting to see how often they use that rule of three. (There was one episode where Robin made two puns and then, smirking, announced, "I have a third but I'm not going to say it." I found that tremendously entertaining for some reason.)
Oh, well. I will start here, and maybe someday have enough to give them their own entry.
the ultimate sadness of all vanitythe stars are indifferent to astronomy