adrenaline sans risk
LJ Idol week 30 (5/6): scared money never wins
I don't gamble. With anything. Ever.
I'm an adrenaline junkie, sure, but not a true risk taker. When I want adrenaline, I chase it in a calculated and well thought out manner. For some people that might kill the high, but for me, it's the only way I can do it. I refuse to leave that much to chance. Lady Luck does not exactly inspire confidence in me.
I have a back-up plan for everything. I have health insurance. I don't live beyond my means. I don't have credit card debt. So while most people have a plan A and maybe some have a plan B, I also have plans C-F. Maybe this makes me sound a little nuts. A little over-prepared. That's probably true. (It also probably has a lot to do with my anxiety disorder.) But it means that things rarely come out of nowhere for me. If there's even the remotest possibility of something happening, you can bet on me having thought about said possibility
Last night, I went to a friend of a friend's thirtieth birthday party. She had a Vegas-themed gambling night at a local restaurant. I'll gamble, but only when it doesn't mean anything. At the beginning of the night, we were each handed $2000 in fake money. I spent most of the night hanging out at the poker table, bluffing terribly and losing all my chips. The dealer kept handing me more chips whenever I ran out. If there's no chance of actual failure, I'll gamble like a madwoman (and usually lose spectacularly). I don't trust my own luck, so if it had been real, I would've cashed in all my chips before ever having sat down at the table, and walked away. But because we were gambling with fake money, I was able to sit and laugh and not think too much about the risks.
The only thing I take risks with is my emotional availability. I know that I fall in love easily; I'm an empath by nature. So even when I know I'd be better off not falling in love, I usually won't do much to stop it from happening.
Logically, I'm safer when I could cut off everyone in my life and still come out on top. But emotionally, that's not a healthy way to live. It's not a skill I'm proud of having honed to a fine art. It's not the way it should be. But I have trust issues, and sometimes it makes it easier if I think that I could drop everything
Only I can't, because emotional connection with other people is a necessary part of being human. That's one of the only kinds of risks I am willing to take, and it's a good one that usually has a fantastic payoff. Still, every time I take that risk, I feel like the girl in front of the dealer who has doubled-down on her cards because she's down on her luck and has everything to lose. Or gain.
Maybe you should just assume from now on that vorsaga has served as my badass beta-reader...<3
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