My throat feels funny. How long does it take for germs to gestate?
sherrold came over last night and we lounged on the couch for quite a while and I lazily pushed a few buttons on the cable remote, and she asked whether "Kate & Leopold" was any good and I said it was, and so we slouched and watched a bit, and then a bit more, and then the whole thing, which wasn't quite what we'd intended to do, but it worked out. I was so sleepy. And then we went and had tapas and drinks and, in my case, dessert.That may have been my last few ounces of sociability for the week...month...vague, as yet to be determined period of time. I'm tapped out.
I have no big issues of friction going on (as measured by my QSQ--queasy stomach quotient), but the cumulative effect of lots of little to medium-sized ones--some of them quite possibly imaginary on my part--is making me feel very anti-social. Dozens of tiny little hairline cracks of tension, and I'm crumbling. I find myself getting tense over innocuous disagreements, or trying to gauge from some ambiguous LJ communication whether two other people like each other or not. Jesus fucking christ.
I usually work to minimize friction in my life--social, emotional, whatever--but some days it suddenly hits me how tired I am, how much that constant maintaining, those constant tiny mental and emotional adjustments, accomodations and social negotiations, the careful half-unconscious word choices where I soften my blunt edges--how much that has worn me down, and I will feel all at once as if I'm teetering on the razor's edge of losing my shit over ridiculous stuff, and bitching out people I like in some mad Tourette's frenzy.
Someone said recently--I can't remember who--that her boyfriend or significant other had made the observation that fandom is like a second job, with all kinds of obligations and expectations. Some days even in fandom it feels as if you have to put your time in at the office, show your face and go through the motions, even if you don't get much done.
I don't need to be told the obvious, which is that I should do whatever I need to do to relax and that I don't have all the obligations I think I have, it's all my choice, etc. It's not so easy to switch yourself off though. And I'm already off--my writing is switched off, and I'm having a hard trouble getting it on. So fandom for me right now is like going to the office and entering insignificant data in some repetitive way, and spending a lot of time drinking coffee and gossiping with people, but not getting anything really worthwhile done. Months of my life wasted.
Someone asked me to collaborate with them on a writing project, and I haven't mustered a response yet. Probably because I'm afraid of commitment.
In other interpersonal areas, there are a few people who give off vague vibes that eat away at my peace of mind--vibes of disappointment, hurt, condescension. I'm tired of vague vibes. Am I giving off vague vibes? Fuck me. But if I said what I thought all the time, I'd become known very quickly as the rudest, craziest, most spastic bitch in fandom. And most of what I said wouldn't be true for more than the length of time it took me to spew it. I'm very much at risk for uttering whatever vile thought comes into my head, because I'm weak, susceptible to my basest emotions, and full of self-loathing that I feel could snap loose from its moorings at any moment and turn outward, projecting and cutting a swathe through anyone in its path, like a wild laser beam. So I control myself tightly and then I get tired, and I feel like my only option is to retreat, because I am losing my handle on ordinary human interactions.
Thoreau would probably advise that I go into the woods.
Also, everyone who rejects me? Today I hate you. Every other day, you get amnesty. Today, you can fuck the hell off. Even though, if you rejected me, you're probably not reading this.
Cutting this short because I can feel one of those stupid Tourette's rants coming on. I should be thanking people for pasta sauce advice, but instead I just have this mean, low-down hate-on for the world. The rest of the world. There was nothing wrong with the pasta sauce advice. Though I wish that more people were interested in talking about poetry too.
There, I've said it. That's one small, honest statement in a swell of sound and fury and pointlessness.
I feel really drained today. I hope I'm not coming down with something.