“Just picked up a black pair of scissors thinking they were my glasses. That definitely wouldn’t have enhanced my eyesight.”
— Phil Lester.
Sometimes you just need to smash a plate. Maybe it’s when your hands are full and the front door is locked. Definitely it’s when that scene is playing out after working a long day at a job that repeatedly jabs at my “fight or flight” button like some depraved rat in a psychology experiment.
I work as a transcriptionist for a professional who had overuse injuries from typing. Great. She hired me for minimum wage, a human shield to take the hit from the vicious keyboard for her. I follow her around all day and furiously type everything she says, send emails for her, prepare orders, and it’s never enough. There’s never a day, heck there’s never an hour, that I don’t make some error that she pointedly remarks upon. “I thought I asked you to send the order but I’m not seeing it, where is it?” Ummmmm, clearly it’s not there you PSYCHO, my eyeballs don’t have any more searching power than yours, it probably got lost in the seven things you asked me to do in the span of ten seconds. I have a terrible working memory, and being anxious makes it even slipperier, if I don’t write something down immediately it’s gone forever. At most I’ll get a horrible nagging feeling that I missed something but never be able to pin it down, my subconscious loves to torture me. My boss too loves to torture me, she absentmindedly blames me for every mistake she makes herself. She’ll dictate to me, I’ll record her word-for-word, and when she reads the transcription later she’ll inevitably ask “why did you write that when I said this.” BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME TO YOU NUTCASE, I DON’T KNOW WHAT ANY OF THIS JARGON MEANS, I COULDN’T WRITE IT WRONG EVEN IF I TRIED. Basically, she sucks, and the job creates this insane upwelling of anxiety and frustration and overwhelm that sucks the emotion out of me, leaving me this flat listless person after work. The problem is, I can’t bring myself to quit because I get to work only 20 hours a week and have unlimited time off, a rare thing to find in employment these days. I’ve never worked full time in my life and the longest job I’ve held is a year. I am this insane mix of wanting more and less at the same time. Full time is too stressful but after a few months at a job I feel like I’ve learned everything I can and get bored.
So as I stood in front of the locked front door with my hands full, contemplating getting the key out of my pocket, I opened my hand and let the plate fall. It was too much to think about, putting everything down, unlocking the door, and picking it all back up. The front door is never locked. I set down my things and picked up the larger pieces of the plate and smashed them even smaller. Then I unlocked the door like a normal human being and swept up the pieces. Sometimes my emotions get the best of me. My default is feeling nothing, but then it goes zero to sixty faster than any Lamborghini can, happiness or sadness or frustration come crashing down on me and suppress all rational thought. Emotions trigger my fight or flight response, they hurt my body and blend my brain into a kaleidoscope smoothie. Good feelings or bad, I end up stuck in my head, blocked off from the world while I try to keep from both crying from frustration and bouncing off the walls with anxious energy. Here’s a fun example, my dad came home from work (yes, I live with my parents still) and went on one of his classic political tirades about Trump (who he calls “Chump”). Once he gets started there’s literally no stopping him, believe me, I’ve tried everything over the last two decades. The only way to escape is to literally turn your back and walk away while he’s still talking. He cornered me while I was most susceptible, eating dinner, I couldn’t just pick up all my bowls (I don’t like when my food touches) and walk away. So I set a new spinach eating record while anxiety/frustration/tears started welling up in me. I wanted to cover my ears, to escape, to make it stop, but for some reason my brain decided that wasn’t allowed until the meal was finished. I struggle with leaving any job half done because I’ll forget to return to it. So I choked down the rest of my dinner and then blurted out “I don’t want to talk about this, I’m going to watch Netflix” and sprinted off. In retrospect I think that was a bit harsh, I didn’t even end up watching Netflix because I was too wound up. My therapist has given me some great scripts to use in these situations, but in that high emotional state pulling out “Dad I’m feeling pretty stressed after work and would really like to have some quiet time with dinner, let’s play a round of cards when I’m finished” would be an act of heroic proportions.
My life isn’t all anxiety though. I recently moved back to my hometown and was pretty anxious around the “friends” I used to hang on the periphery of in high school. Like a remora on a shark or some shizzz. They have this crazy competitive cliquey thing that I don’t understand the rules of and honestly, I find their conversations dull. I joined an outing with them once when I got back into town and then promptly turned down every subsequent invitation, I haven’t hung out with anyone but my parents for months and I actually don’t mind it at all, my mom likes playing board games with me while my dad cooks dinner. The highlight of my week though was saying yes to reconnecting with an old friend who moved back. We were best buddies up until he moved to Canada when I was ten and I hadn’t seen him in years. Hanging out was actually AWESOME. No anxiety. Probably because he (like me) is weird as hell. So yes. Successful social interaction for the win, with promise of more to come. Highlight.
