On Solitude, or: Something I Have Learned About Myself
I tend to write more about the physical aspects of Project Peacock, and those aspects are important--indeed, much more important than those who reflexively sneer at or dismiss fashion and style and outward self-expression realize or would credit. But one of the things about restoring my outward self to the person I am, and choose to be, is that taking on that work (and being successful at it) meant that I had to really get to know myself from the inside. It turns out that you can't effectively express who you are on the outside without accepting who you are on the inside (imagine that!), and the process of doing that was... interesting. Mostly good, but it did sometimes involve discovering and accepting a few surprise nuggets of truth about myself.
And one of those things that I learned--the thing that I ran face-first into last evening, the thing that is relevant to this entry--is that I really am an essentially social creature. I need people--need to hear from them, be around them, touch them, talk to them, listen to them, be in their presence, make them smile and laugh.
Put simply: I don't do well in solitude. It does not nurture me; it smothers and starves me. And although I accept it as a necessary condition for certain things (writing, grading, researching) that are crucial to me and what I do, I really do need to figure out a better way to protect myself against too much of it.
As I said, this is one of those discoveries of self-acceptance that I've made over the past few years: realizing that I am an extrovert, that I need to have contact with people, or in the absence of human contact (physical or digital), need to have a really absorbing project--or better yet, several--to consume my attention and distract me from the lack of social input.
In the absence of both of those things, so I have found, I can go for perhaps two days (at most) without social contact before things start to go weird and uncomfortable on me. I'm almost never cognizant of having reached this point before it all just hits me like a derailed freight train of boredom and anxiety. Where I normally feel like I can metabolize sunshine and small pleasures and excitement into a nearly bottomless supply of joy, I will suddenly feel like so horribly, achingly lonely and sad and small and forlorn and invisible--forgotten, even, although I know that's silly. Creativity dries up--in fact, almost everything does, because it's like I've run out of fuel, and I'm so very bored. I won't feel like dressing up or being particularly peacocky. It feels like what little protective barrier there normally is between me and the world has gone thin and weak, and every little thing makes me want to burst into tears, no matter how ridiculous. I feel like the silence is suffocating me, like I've been cut off from the world, and it's awful. (The idea of being alone in the world, genuinely alone, fills me with a primal horror that I'm not sure I'll ever have the words to describe. It's like the nameless, cold, and absolute terror that shocks you as a child, when you realize that you're lost and you can't find your parents or friends and you think that you might be lost forever, adrift in space, unclaimed and unwanted.)
It's in those moments, more than any others, that I wish I didn't live alone, because what I want more than anything is for somebody solid and unshakable to be there: to let me cuddle them, to curl up on the sofa with me and eat ice cream and watch cartoons or something equally silly and funny, to pamper me just a little bit and tell me that my hair looks good, to laugh at my jokes and make me feel connected to the world again and remind me that I haven't gone invisible. The cats, lovely and loving as they are, can't quite provide that sort of comfort.
As dire as I'm making it sound, and as terrible as it feels, it's actually amazingly easy to dispel one of these moods. It honestly doesn't take much. All I need is a text or tweet from a friend, a call, a quick visit, a snippet of chat online--something, anything that brings that spark of connection, to remind me that I haven't floated away and I'm still connected to humanity. And then everything snaps back into focus, like it was never out in the first place, and life makes perfect sense again, and all that loneliness and sadness just disappears, forgotten as quickly as it arrived. The sun parts the dark clouds, and all is well.
You'd think I would remember this simple fact when I'm in the middle of one of these transient fits of existential angst, wouldn't you, and then seek out that social interaction I'm lacking, and be happy and productive and positive again. You would think that, but you'd be wrong; it seems to take me by surprise every time. I never seem to anticipate those rare moments when I'm going to be genuinely alone, when most of my friends and family will be out of town, out of reach, or otherwise occupied. And in the midst of one of these times, I can never remember exactly what I need or how to seek it out. I just know that I feel horrible and not myself--and worse, I feel guilty about that, because I know that I'm expected to be cheerful and upbeat and self-sufficient, the wheel that never squeaks. In all fairness, that is usually accurate... but every so often, it isn't, and I somehow feel as though I'm letting people down in not living up to that expected standard. And I never want to reach out then, because I know that said people are very busy (which is why they aren't where they usually are), and it feels horribly needy and clingy and presumptuous to contact a friend or loved one out of the blue to say, "I need you to hug me right now, because I'm feeling unloved, and I'm not as self-sufficient as I appear to be." Not least because I know that so many of them are introverts who don't necessarily have those emotional resources to offer, and I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable--or smothered.
I seem to be pretty good at knowing when to offer emotional support to others (and I like doing that!), but I am not skilled at all at asking for it on my own behalf. I am not sure how you get better at that, but I think it might be a skill worth cultivating. ~ponders~
In any case, I am thinking abut these things because yes, I did have one of those times this past weekend. As usual when this happens, many of my friends and family were unreachable this weekend, and for a variety of very good reasons. This didn't register with me as silence for some time, because I've been occupied with grading--which is, as I said at the start, one of those activities requiring solitude that I've come to accept, and to which I've adapted. When I'm writing, or creating something, or grading, or researching, it feels to me like going inside a diving bell and being plunged down to the depths, in a little cocoon of contemplation and quietude. I don't hear the rest of the world at times like those; everything else feels far away, muffled, indistinct, and I don't miss the world because it hardly seems to exist outside of what's in front of me.
But eventually, I need to come up for fresh air, and when I do, I crave company like... well, like fresh air. *g* I need companionship to break through that cocoon, recharge me, revive me, remind me that I'm human. Without it, well... ~gestures up above~ When that happens, it's like I'm trapped inside that cocoon, and it isn't at all comforting or conducive to creativity--it's smothering me, cutting me off, blocking out any spark of idea or insight.
I'm not entirely certain where I'm going with this, to be honest with you. I suppose I feel like I've detected enough of a pattern in these times to want to work it out on the page (or in pixels) and see if, in doing so, I might push myself to understand it--and myself--a little bit better, because if I can start to understand it, perhaps I can start to figure out ways to protect myself just a little bit better. It is, at very least, a start.
But don't worry about me; I'm completely back to my usual self by now. These things never last long, and a good night's rest is, almost without fail, like wiping the slate clean and starting again, whistling a happy tune. Sunday has been--fittingly--a much sunnier day, literally and figuratively, and I see no reason to anticipate clouds on the horizon anytime soon. :-)
In any case, hugs and love and glittery kisses to all who want or need them! These are stressful times for many of us, in different ways, and I hope you know that no matter the situation, I'm always wishing all of you the best.
And one of those things that I learned--the thing that I ran face-first into last evening, the thing that is relevant to this entry--is that I really am an essentially social creature. I need people--need to hear from them, be around them, touch them, talk to them, listen to them, be in their presence, make them smile and laugh.
Put simply: I don't do well in solitude. It does not nurture me; it smothers and starves me. And although I accept it as a necessary condition for certain things (writing, grading, researching) that are crucial to me and what I do, I really do need to figure out a better way to protect myself against too much of it.
As I said, this is one of those discoveries of self-acceptance that I've made over the past few years: realizing that I am an extrovert, that I need to have contact with people, or in the absence of human contact (physical or digital), need to have a really absorbing project--or better yet, several--to consume my attention and distract me from the lack of social input.
In the absence of both of those things, so I have found, I can go for perhaps two days (at most) without social contact before things start to go weird and uncomfortable on me. I'm almost never cognizant of having reached this point before it all just hits me like a derailed freight train of boredom and anxiety. Where I normally feel like I can metabolize sunshine and small pleasures and excitement into a nearly bottomless supply of joy, I will suddenly feel like so horribly, achingly lonely and sad and small and forlorn and invisible--forgotten, even, although I know that's silly. Creativity dries up--in fact, almost everything does, because it's like I've run out of fuel, and I'm so very bored. I won't feel like dressing up or being particularly peacocky. It feels like what little protective barrier there normally is between me and the world has gone thin and weak, and every little thing makes me want to burst into tears, no matter how ridiculous. I feel like the silence is suffocating me, like I've been cut off from the world, and it's awful. (The idea of being alone in the world, genuinely alone, fills me with a primal horror that I'm not sure I'll ever have the words to describe. It's like the nameless, cold, and absolute terror that shocks you as a child, when you realize that you're lost and you can't find your parents or friends and you think that you might be lost forever, adrift in space, unclaimed and unwanted.)
It's in those moments, more than any others, that I wish I didn't live alone, because what I want more than anything is for somebody solid and unshakable to be there: to let me cuddle them, to curl up on the sofa with me and eat ice cream and watch cartoons or something equally silly and funny, to pamper me just a little bit and tell me that my hair looks good, to laugh at my jokes and make me feel connected to the world again and remind me that I haven't gone invisible. The cats, lovely and loving as they are, can't quite provide that sort of comfort.
As dire as I'm making it sound, and as terrible as it feels, it's actually amazingly easy to dispel one of these moods. It honestly doesn't take much. All I need is a text or tweet from a friend, a call, a quick visit, a snippet of chat online--something, anything that brings that spark of connection, to remind me that I haven't floated away and I'm still connected to humanity. And then everything snaps back into focus, like it was never out in the first place, and life makes perfect sense again, and all that loneliness and sadness just disappears, forgotten as quickly as it arrived. The sun parts the dark clouds, and all is well.
You'd think I would remember this simple fact when I'm in the middle of one of these transient fits of existential angst, wouldn't you, and then seek out that social interaction I'm lacking, and be happy and productive and positive again. You would think that, but you'd be wrong; it seems to take me by surprise every time. I never seem to anticipate those rare moments when I'm going to be genuinely alone, when most of my friends and family will be out of town, out of reach, or otherwise occupied. And in the midst of one of these times, I can never remember exactly what I need or how to seek it out. I just know that I feel horrible and not myself--and worse, I feel guilty about that, because I know that I'm expected to be cheerful and upbeat and self-sufficient, the wheel that never squeaks. In all fairness, that is usually accurate... but every so often, it isn't, and I somehow feel as though I'm letting people down in not living up to that expected standard. And I never want to reach out then, because I know that said people are very busy (which is why they aren't where they usually are), and it feels horribly needy and clingy and presumptuous to contact a friend or loved one out of the blue to say, "I need you to hug me right now, because I'm feeling unloved, and I'm not as self-sufficient as I appear to be." Not least because I know that so many of them are introverts who don't necessarily have those emotional resources to offer, and I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable--or smothered.
I seem to be pretty good at knowing when to offer emotional support to others (and I like doing that!), but I am not skilled at all at asking for it on my own behalf. I am not sure how you get better at that, but I think it might be a skill worth cultivating. ~ponders~
In any case, I am thinking abut these things because yes, I did have one of those times this past weekend. As usual when this happens, many of my friends and family were unreachable this weekend, and for a variety of very good reasons. This didn't register with me as silence for some time, because I've been occupied with grading--which is, as I said at the start, one of those activities requiring solitude that I've come to accept, and to which I've adapted. When I'm writing, or creating something, or grading, or researching, it feels to me like going inside a diving bell and being plunged down to the depths, in a little cocoon of contemplation and quietude. I don't hear the rest of the world at times like those; everything else feels far away, muffled, indistinct, and I don't miss the world because it hardly seems to exist outside of what's in front of me.
But eventually, I need to come up for fresh air, and when I do, I crave company like... well, like fresh air. *g* I need companionship to break through that cocoon, recharge me, revive me, remind me that I'm human. Without it, well... ~gestures up above~ When that happens, it's like I'm trapped inside that cocoon, and it isn't at all comforting or conducive to creativity--it's smothering me, cutting me off, blocking out any spark of idea or insight.
I'm not entirely certain where I'm going with this, to be honest with you. I suppose I feel like I've detected enough of a pattern in these times to want to work it out on the page (or in pixels) and see if, in doing so, I might push myself to understand it--and myself--a little bit better, because if I can start to understand it, perhaps I can start to figure out ways to protect myself just a little bit better. It is, at very least, a start.
But don't worry about me; I'm completely back to my usual self by now. These things never last long, and a good night's rest is, almost without fail, like wiping the slate clean and starting again, whistling a happy tune. Sunday has been--fittingly--a much sunnier day, literally and figuratively, and I see no reason to anticipate clouds on the horizon anytime soon. :-)
In any case, hugs and love and glittery kisses to all who want or need them! These are stressful times for many of us, in different ways, and I hope you know that no matter the situation, I'm always wishing all of you the best.