31/08/2024

nerves, connection, time

Summer is lingering but slowly shifting, and the days are slowly getting shorter and colder. My month has been filled with a contrast of highs and lows, excitement and stagnation, and always with a gnawing edge of anxiety. I've felt connected and appreciated by people but also isolated, and I've felt caught between my old bad habits and trying new things, trying to be a bit different. I've been feeling like the sun this month, in the middle of everything, but still hanging around like it has nowhere to be. But there is a whisper that leads you to think that things can change fast, and you're in a fishing reel.
For the first couple of weeks I mostly stayed alone in my room, I've been exhausted and feeling unable to give anything my attention. I saw my friend a couple of times however, and we walked around just talking about other people and things that have happened. I never do anything in particular with this friend as we're both super indecisive, but we can talk for hours and stay entertained so it's never really been an issue between us. There's a sense of safety with this routine and I felt like I appreciated my friend a bit harder than usual.
I met up with three of my online friends in Glasgow on short notice, which is unlike me and I knew it would go badly as I prefer to walk through every possible scenerio for at least a week before doing anything different from my usual. The whole journey I felt sick with anxiety and dread and like I regretted everything. When we came face to face all together I felt as if I could faint from the release of the anticipation and I remember the sense that this was going to be a big thing for me, I don't feel okay with socialising often. My worries melted away fast, especially after drinking, and things started to feel more effortless. However, we planned to go to a slam metal gig, and as we were leaving I think the stress prior to meeting surfaced as I freaked out and had some kind of transient episode of not knowing where I was or who I was with. Luckily my friends just saw this as a slight disruption, if not kind of funny, and we continued with our night. We had to try not to draw too much attention in the hotel as staff had tried to talk to us twice, about noise complaints and substances. The next day we had brunch, saw Alien: Romulus in a cinema, accidentally joined a group of strangers' rounders game, went to a normal club, and to a strip club. However, paranoia was really setting in for me as over the weekend I kept hearing my name and personal details about myself being discussed by almost everyone I passed in public. I felt like everybody knew everything bad I had ever done, and it made it very hard to focus, like someone looming behind you and pushing your head forwards over and over, it felt like being dissected. The feeling of complete exposure unnerved me and made me ansty and mad. It was one of the nicest weekends of my life despite all of that, and I would like my friends to visit me here next but I'd be a little embarrassed of my city as it is essentially just a poor reflection of Glasgow's vibrancy.
My uneasiness didn’t really dissipate when I got back home. If anything it grew more insistent, it was like a drumbeat I wasn't going to escape. I spent days in bed and I sank into the internet and scrolling like it was the only thing keeping me tethered. My own city seemed to close in on me now. I feel like I'm waatching my own life from behind glass a lot of the time, observer and observed, caught in a self scrutiny loop? My grandparents, taking notice of my mood and behaviour, took me to the cinema to see the same movie I saw in Glasgow. They took me to one of my favourite Greek restaurants and to a historical town to walk around. Today we went on another walk around a town in the Peak District as it was one of my favourite places to explore when I was a kid. I felt too insecure and sensitive to the heat to enjoy it properly. After all of these outings I still just like to stay in my room away from them, which makes me feel bad but I am just exhausted. My friend from the start of the month and my other friend both invited me to a bar with them, they're my only remaining friendsfrom the same city as me but they currently live away for university, and this was the last chance I would have to see them both so I went of course. I try to avoid being in the city centre too much, especially around the high streets and bars at night. There are lots of people I used to know and they're the last people I want to bump into, so I'm even less relaxed than usual. Luckily there were no faces I recognised all night and I savoured the time with my friends.
But it wasn't really enough, as one of my friends is slipping away, it’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck. She’s in her first relationship at 21, and while I'd like to be happy for her, I can’t stop the feeling that her boyfriend is bad news. His behaviour, his passing comments, his appearance, how he treats her... I hate all of it. And she's slowly isolating from us. He’s not evil in an obvious way, but there’s something off about him like when people stop mid roaring argument to answer a phone call with a sickeningly sweet voice. And as she gets more wrapped up in him, I feel her slipping away from me. It’s a slow drift that I don’t know how to stop. Or maybe I just don’t have the energy to try to, I mean I have made the same mistakes in the past.
My long-distance boyfriend and I have finally made plans to meet next month, and I’ve been longing for that with an intensity that is like obsession. But now that it’s definitely happening, I’m feeling very insecure and sick, like I don't deserve such a great thing to happen and it'll just go terribly somehow. It will be a very vulnerable and exposing experience, and I want it to happen but that doesn't completely dispell the nerves surrounding it. I keep replaying different scenarios in my head as a way to prepare myself for every possible outcome. But the anticipation is killing me. I just want to skip to the part where he’s here, where I can finally see him and hold him and know.
My energy is nonexistent, my attention span is a joke, and nothing holds my interest. I tried reading Fanged Noumena because I thought maybe some philosophical challenge would wake my brain up, after all this time dismissing philosophy. I realised I made the classic mistake of reading something way over my head, so I'm trying to build from the ground up with books like Speed and Politics that people say are more accessible. Philosophy, technology—they feel like languages I never heard, conversations I’m excluded from. I feel like my brain is just dead or ignoring and rejecting me or something. I can't bring myself to make any art either. I keep telling myself that it’ll come back, that I’ll find my way back to that spark that used to drive me, but the longer it stays away, the more I wonder if I’ve actually just lost it for good. There’s a guilt and a fear that I’ve lost that essential thing, something that defined me my whole life. I stay hopeful though. I feel after I navigate everything with my boyfriend visiting and my friends moving back to university maybe I can get a grip of my own life a little better.