Mid-point crisis

“If this is the dynamic you’re used to, no wonder you can’t interact with people in a normal, healthy way.”

QB’s response to this week’s crisis (my family putting down our 15 year old dog and informing me via email) is pretty spot on. I’m way over my tears budget for this year, so I’m not even going to write about the emotional agony of losing a four-legged friend. Almost everyone goes through it eventually, but this has happened to me three times in the past 4 years and there’s not much I haven’t already said.

Anyway, this response got me thinking (almost always a dangerous thing). But it’s true. Normal interactions elude me even when I’m pretending really hard to be normal myself. It’s not really flattering to think that your own personality is “wrong” and getting in the way of your own life, but for a long time it has been.

I’m shy, secretive, defensive, self-destructive, easily intimidated, stubborn, and proud to a fault. And it’s ruining my life, which honestly has never needed my help being shitty, anyway.

Latest example: I’m terrified of my boss. I have no idea what she wants from me, am convinced she thinks I’m an idiot, get very flustered in front of her, and avoid contact or asking for help because of these reasons. I will go to any lengths to get by her. Which is ludicrous: ostensibly she is here to teach me (and provide a recommendation, should the need arise). But I can’t get over it. Today is my mid-internship evaluation and I’m half-convinced I will either be sent home in shame or reprimanded for all these things I do that I know are stupid and wrong (even as I continue to do them), but cannot seem to help.

Did I used to be better, or was the universe just asking less of me?

Pedaling back to TN tonight as fast as Space Ghost will carry me to drown my anxieties and depression in a sea of cupcakes and trashy tv.