For the last few months I haven't written a blog. It's not that I haven't tried to write one, I've tried many times. I've sat down at my computer and tried to type out what I was feeling, but I've never gotten past the first paragraph. A short recap of the last few months includes falling off the wagon, getting back on it, and falling off again. Being an addict is really hard. I could sit here and try to come up with a more eloquent way of putting that, but “hard” feels like the most appropriate word. When you're an addict even the smallest battles feel like giant mountains that you have to traverse without a safety net. One of the worst things about being an addict is the constant isolation. Sure members of OA have meetings and support groups and sponsors to pick you up in your lowest moments, but being an addict, your lowest moments aren’t just the ones when you want to eat food it's all the other moments of the day. It's getting sad for no reason at 2 o'clock in the morning. It's feeling different, feeling estranged from the rest of the world. Sometimes you just want to feel normal.
For instance, this weekend I had the pleasure of attending a Wedding of a friend I’ve known since High School. I say pleasure, but I really should say horror. It was a wonderful ceremony and I’m told there was quite a beautiful reception afterwards. I say I was told, because I wasn’t there. I was already making my two hour trek home. I was at the reception for upwards of five minutes but then I started shaking, lost my nerve, and sat in my car for twenty minutes before driving home. I wish I wasn’t this person. It seems that somewhere along the line, I never learned how to socially interact with people. I never learned how to have the “Pottery Barn” discussion. The meaningless conversation that it seems most couples have managed to perfect. You know what I mean, the random talk about dinnerware or window blinds. Something seemingly innocuous that makes the time go faster between where you are and what you need to be doing later. You don’t remember those conversations afterwards, but you remember how pleasant the other couple was and you leave with a tiny jolt of happiness. I don’t know how to have those conversations and the mere fact that I call them “conversations” might be part of the problem. I know that so many people suffer from some kind of social anxiety but for someone who teaches Professional Speech for a living this is more than just a casual problem.
Before I continue, I don’t want to get into a semantics debate about the word “normal”. Yes, I understand that no one is truly normal, but I don’t think anyone is confused by my meaning. And I also know that the bulk of people who know me would say that I am extremely personable, if not occasionally too personable. It's true that there are certain groups of people and certain situations that let my guard down. I joke all the time that I have very little shame, which is regularly true, but when it comes to anything “real” like the birth of a child or a date or a wedding my inner inability to even speak rises to the forefront. I become scared, clammy, and lost.
I'm extremely jealous of my friends who have mastered these skills. I’m jealous of the married couple who work typical hours and typical jobs while raising their two daughters and get in arguments over the PTA and mortgages. On more than one occasion, I’ve been caught saying “I wish we could switch places,” and them replying without any hesitancy, “yes.” Maybe this isn’t really a desire to be normal or something to do with addiction, but rather the paradox of the grass always being greener. Everyone in one way or another is envious of what other people have. The rich person will sit and ponder what it must be like to be poor without the responsibility of their job while the poor person worries about paying that mortgage and wishes to be rich. But here is the part where the addiction kicks in.
It’s not that I’m any more or less socially anxious than a lot of my friends, but rather that because of my addiction I wallow in it. A problematic social interaction can live with me for weeks or just five hours, those five hours being the ones between lunch and dinner. The hours where the addiction really rests. I’ve had a lot of people ask me about my progress and most of them comment on how hard it must be for me to work out all that time. What they don’t see is that those three hours a day are the best three hours. The problem comes with the other twenty-one hours. The twenty-one hours when an anxiety attack outside of a wedding reception can make you just want to eat a pizza to numb the pain. And why was this particular wedding reception so terrifying. Was it watching all the happy couples hold each other closer as the bride and groom gave their vows? Was it the little ring bearer nearly tripping over his giant shoes walking down the aisles which made even the most cynical audience member ooo and awe? Was it sitting alone in a giant crowd of people? Or was it simply walking into a ballroom, feeling scared, and turning around to a giant table of cupcakes and smelling the sugar from twenty feet away? It could’ve been any one of these things and it wasn’t anyone’s fault.
Some days I just wish I could be normal
But I’m not.
198 days down.
