Anxiety: Inverse

First off, something totally unrelated to what I'm gonna talk about below. In the previous entry, I mentioned an ever-increasing desire to hook up with a girl, because I wanted to experience what it felt like (as opposed to because I wanna sleep around regularly; I might hook up once and not do it again cos the curiosity's gone, you never know). I spoke about it as if my immediate desire to hook up had superceded my long-term desire to have a steady relationship—and it had, to be honest—but not long after I published that entry, I had a small internal dialogue:

...dude, what about cuddling?
Cuddling? Yeah, what about it?
Isn't it that thing you go on and on about every single fucking time you talk about going out with a girl? You mention it all the time——
Oh yeah! Cuddling! Holy shit, how could I forget that?
I know, right! And hand-holding?
Yyeeaahh, hand-holding! Man, that takes me back.
And that thing where you're dancing, looking each other in the eyes, and your arms go around her waist, and hers go around your neck, and you start kissing each other?
...isn't that something you only see in movies?
Well maybe, but it's still cute as fuck, right?
Oh yeah yeah, it's awesome. Seriously, what made me forget all this shit?
Your dick.

I basically forgot how much I enjoyed the physical side to my former relationship, and how much I'm looking forward to expanding on that the next time I'm dating. Hook-up sex appeals to me cos its spontaneous, it's quick and dirty, really 'in-the-moment', and that's definitely still enticing to me. But if I'm dating a girl, one I have feelings for (otherwise, why would I be dating her?), I'll want to be romantically intimate with her infinitely more than I'll want to be sexually intimate with any other woman.

Whether I first have sex via a one-night-stand or via dating, I still get mostly the same base experience: impressing girl, seeing naked girl, touching naked girl, having naked girl touch me, and having us sexually satisfy each other The only difference is the contexts in which these experiences occur. I think the hook-up context is sexier cos it's more of an "I wanna fuck you right now" rather than "yeah, eventually making love to you would be really sweet". It'd also feel more dangerous and thrilling cos I'd be fucking a stranger rather than a girl I'd been seeing for a while, and I'd feel more triumphant in convincing a girl to sleep with me cos I have less faith in my sex appeal & flirting ability than I do in my personality and conversational skills. But making love, being an expression of heartfelt desire rather than mere lust, will feel probably feel just as intense in its own way (and, with any luck, I'll get to do it over and over again rather than just once :P)

I don't know why it took me this many paragraphs to say "it really doesn't matter inside whom my dick goes first, so long as the girl in question wants it inside her", but there you have it :P  It'll be fun and exciting either way, and I'll probably get to experience both during my lifetime, content with whichever one comes my way as it does. Hopefully this subject can now come up less often in blogs, cos I talk about it a llloooottt and it's probably boring to most people reading :P

It's also relevant to me right now for a reason I'm not gonna bring up yet—and trust me, it's not what you think it is ;)



So, onto the main entry. I've had to deal with a little bit of anxiety lately, just little patches of it here and there. Anxiety about social things is a background issue for me, I guess. It used to be a foreground issue, because would directly stop me from taking risks and making social progress. Now it's more of a side-effect of actually taking said risks: after doing so, I can sometimes panic about what people's reactions will be, or if they'll react at all. I suppose it's because if I consider a possible outcome for an action, I usually follow it as far down the logical path as I can. And it's not like all the possible outcomes are good; they can be good, but they're usually bad. It's not such an issue that I think I need professional help or medication or anything, but it's definitely a thing I deal with from time to time.

Like a few days ago, I sent out invites for a meet-up in town to about six people. By the end of the day, I'd only got responses from two people, one of whom was the one who gave me the idea to set the event up in the first place. Simultaneously, I know that everyone's seen the invite, cos it says so right at the bottom of the message box. That kind of shit messes with my head, cos it leaves me wondering if I've pissed people off by sending the invites with too little notice, or if what I've suggested isn't fun or interesting.

I get that people may not immediately know if they can go, but I'm not wanting confirmation of availability so much as I'm wanting confirmation of interest. A simple " I'll let you know if I can go later on" would do wonders, fucking seriously. I don't wanna ask people for anymore than basic politeness, but to me, confirming interest is an act of politeness. It's a sentence, a mere sentence; it takes no more time to type that than it does to read the message. When people only respond the night before, the interim has me worried that people simply don't give a shit. And that's when the anxiety hits: when I come to the (false) conclusion that, no, what I've offered isn't really that enticing. Likewise, when people do respond, I get really happy and glad that I made the effort and organised what shall become a fun meet-up; that long-run reward is basically what's kept me doing this for as long as I have. But sometimes, that initial silence is more painful than seems reasonable.

Similarly, I left a comment on a friend's blog sometime ago—one of her relatives is going through a very tough time right now, which is hard on her too, so I figured I'd write something nice to try and cheer her up. I know full well I can't fix anything or comfort her for any extended period of time cos I'm too far removed from the situation (and it'd be rude to do so anyway cos it's none of my business), but I still wanted to at least try and make her feel a little better. I enjoy reading her replies when she gives them, cos we don't speak often and her perspective usually helps me evaluate my own, but I forgot to tick the little "notify" box which actually tells you when you get a reply (it really should be ticked by default imo). So I went back to check the post manually a few times, to see if she'd said anything. She hadn't, so I went on with whatever else I was doing. I checked again today for the hell of it (we've both previously delayed comments & replies for days at a time), and to my surprise, my comment was gone.

Comments don't disappear by themselves, not to my knowledge; and I'm 99.9% sure I wrote and posted this comment in real life, rather than posting in a dream (cos I totally dream about leaving comments on Blogger :P), or forgetting to click the 'post' button. So my first thought was "oh, it's been deleted". But why would she delete it? It's not like I said anything malicious or invasive. So then I'm left wondering if she thought it was insincere, like I wrote the comment with some ulterior motive, the comment being deleted so she didn't have to read my bullshit. It may also have been similar to some other comment I'd left previously (I vaguely remember commenting about her sick relative but honestly can't remember what I said). Now we're entering Conspiracy-Theory Land! What evidence is there of such deletion? None. Could've been an accident for all I know; it's happened before. And going through my emails, her responses to my comments are never vitriolic or hateful—they've pretty much always been nothing but kind and supportive—so it would be completely out of character for her to trash my comment in a blind rage.

I also worry about bringing this up here (or mentioning her, or other specific people, at all on this blog sometimes) and fear being seen as obsessive over something trivial, which may look suspicious. Basically, very fork in the chain of causation has the potential to lead to paranoia. It's really silly. I'm better at dealing with it now than I ever have been, because it's shorter lived than it previously was, and the types of anxiety attacks where I have to get out of my seat and walk around for an hour are so rare that I can't remember the last time it even happened.



Oddly, I don't get anxious about things that a lot of people do get anxious about. Public speaking would be the most obvious example—as nervous as I might be before I speak, once I'm up there, I'm fine. For most other people, though, it scares them shitless. And I totally understand why: who wants to fuck up in front of a group of people who are all paying attention to you at once? No one! People fear stumbling over words, speaking too quickly, appearing nervous, forgetting what to say, not getting laughs if they tell a joke. And those aren't stupid things to fear cos any one of those things can feel really embarrassing! I mean, does any audience really give a fuck if you have to start a sentence again? No, not really. But that doesn't mean you don't feel judged when you do so; it just means you're mistaken. And perhaps realising you're mistaken (or at least that you can be mistaken) is part of alleviating stage-fright, because you learn that, no, the first negative conclusion you jump to in your head about what the audience thinks of you isn't necessarily what they're actually thinking. It's still bad to forget lines or talk too quickly, but it's not the massive blunder people think it is; you just keep going. Maybe improvise a line if it's appropriate, but don't dwell on it. The audience basically cares as much as you let them care, so give them something else to think about: your next sentence.

I guess I wanna transfer that mindset to my everyday life more consistently: acknowledging mistakes, but also recognising when I make automated deductions based on fear rather than evidence, particularly when the evidence directly contradicts the theory put forth by fear. I dunno how common this is, so I've no clue if people can relate to my specific anxiety 'triggers' (for lack of a better word), but I'm sure people can relate to anxiety in general cos I don't think anyone's 100% immune to it.