Rambling for Science
As I sit here drinking the fifth Pumpkin Ale of the night, I’ve come to a realization I’ve entertained several times through the last few years: I’m too uptight. Unfortunately it’s not just a matter of being a bundle of nerves. I’ve always self-medicated to one degree or another, but it’s readily apparent I’m only relaxed enough to be “normal” when my usual vigilance is chemically retarded.
But why would that be? It’s no secret I’m too analytical for my own good; one could say it’s been a defining characteristic of my life, and even when inebriated, my propensity for conceptually dismantling the situation is inescapable. I’m not sure what most people think, but drunk people should not revert to logic as their last bastion, so why do I? Ever since the very first time over ten years ago when I first shrugged the assumption I long maintained that alcohol was the bastion of loss and weakness, I’ve wondered about the counter-intuitive concept of its occasional necessity.
So my only real recourse is to seek professional treatment, because I’m not a doctor and even something as “mild” as alcohol is a dangerous fallback to everyday life. My experience dictates there’s something genetic or summarily dominant in my family that requires direct intervention. Trust me on this: something in my DNA is demonstrably flawed concerning familial inherited traits. My grandmother accused my mother of attempting to steal her second husband . . . when my mother was all of nine years old. I may not have been part of the ensuing rape and convoluted destruction that ensued in those intervening years, but according to common sense and known psychological and anthropological aspects of human interaction, logic suggests I’ve inherited at least a synchronous aspect of my genetic inheritance.
And it’s undeniable: my mother is an emotional infant, irrespective of her detrimental upbringing, her untapped intelligence quotient, and so on. I have a certain greater amount of strength, but the root is an inescapable inability to interact with humanity on all but the most shallow of levels. Whatever problems I have, they were passed on to me from my mother, from her mother, down the immeasurable confines of history to wherever they originated. And why not? Even though I’m barely capable of focusing through my contact lenses, I elucidate as if my sense of self hinges on my ability to comprehend my surroundings and my place within them, and truth be told, they always have.
My thirty-third birthday went without comment on the 18th because I had nothing to say. I’ve slowly realized I’m starting to care less and less about the everyday commonalities of life, and regardless of how frightening that is conceptually, I carry on as I always have: one day after another, because I have nothing else. It’s not a matter of acceptance, or even commonality with those mortals attempting to come to terms with their own lives, but because of the cause of this entire rant: I am apart.
When I was a Sophomore in high school, a friend of mine played a joke on a girl in class, and to curry favor and emulate accepted norms, I emulated his actions, yet my attempts were frowned upon, to say the least. It was clear then, as it is now, my natural instincts are somewhat tainted by some unnatural or misinterpreted concepts of human interaction, and why not? This whole diatribe is evidence I’m fundamentally unfit or at least decoupled in that regard, that my analytical approach to emulating human interaction is insufficient. It shouldn’t be, if the concept is truly appreciated. I’ve struggled with this for decades, and it’s only when I’m very very drunk that I relax enough to interact somewhat naturally with my peers.
According to the “known” interaction alcohol has with inhibitions, it’s fairly clear I overthink things, and always have. My propensity for this activity implies a certain paranoia or insecurity decoupled from situational aspects, largely irrelevant to the logical centers of my cerebral cortex, considering my other habit of mentally withdrawing from novelty in a demonstrably clinical manner-devolving into anxiety attacks driven by rocking or other self-stimulation to diffuse whatever scenario prompted my mental breakdown-I’ve little recourse but to avoid human interaction. It’s not really a choice I embrace, yet unless chemically aided, I have no other recourse.
I’m just not like you. I never have been. I’m not just an “engineer,” but a self-professed pariah, not just because I can’t relate, but because life itself is alien to me. Existence itself is surreal, and even though I interact more naturally under the influence, even my most numbed senses are several orders of magnitude above what would be considered normal. What’s worse is that I’m not boasting or even complaining, but simply trying to explain why I’ve never felt part of humanity, and all of my attempts to interact have resulted in hilarious miscommunications or outright offense.
The conclusion of this, of course, is that I need a psychiatrist for several self-explanatory reasons. Utmost among them, is my inherited inability to “let go”. I don’t have paranoid delusions, but my existing amount of anxiety has long since overwhelmed my coping mechanisms and degraded into nervous tics and unhealthy levels of alertness. Not only do I eschew companionship, but I’m always mentally dissecting situations and implications to determine their logical conclusion. Regardless of my ultimate accuracy, it’s certainly an abnormal trait if only because it means I can never take something at face value.
And that’s what being me is like. I probably have some level of general or social anxiety, I’ve always been afraid of or repelled by humanity in all its incarnations, I can only interact (mildly) when those instincts are heavily suppressed, and even then, I’m left with a surreal aspect that makes the experience of living itself an uncomfortable sensation akin to having my skin sheered off with a dull spoon.
All of that because I had a couple beers after dinner. That’s not even close to the commonly accepted reaction most people associate with alcohol, and that’s really only the beginning. It’s been thirty years; I deserve some resolution or at least a certain amount of escape from the constant vigilance or I probably will have a psychotic break. Whatever intelligence I may have been gifted with, it can’t make up for this.
Until Tomorrow
Originally published at BonesMoses.org. You can comment here or there.