Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Friday, September 4, 2009
Jewelry
I sometimes feel like I put on jewelry like armor, when I'm nervous, when I'm scared of how I'm going to be perceived. Before a date that has me filled with butterflies. I slip on my bracelet gauntlets, my rings like brass knuckles, my necklaces like shields. They impose a distance, no one can stroke my wrists, nuzzle my neck, kiss my fingers. I am buffered by my work, and by the excuse to speak, to defend myself: Yes, I made it out of blowtorches and steel and metal dredged from the ground, adorned it with sharp stones, it is mine. A demonstration of my control over extreme elements (over myself, over you).
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Dreams
For as long as I can remember, significantly before I actually started driving, I've had these endlessly repeated dreams where I'm trying to drive and I end up in the backseat, or in the passenger seat, or the brakes simply will. not. work. And I swerve, and I can't reach, and I do everything right and the car absolutely will not do what I want. Last night I had the second version of those dreams - where I try to punch or hit someone and I can't. My arm feels like it starts out in air, by mid-swing through water, and ends up as though I'm trying to punch through sand. I don't remember whether I'm attacking or defending - I think I've had dreams with both - but I'm just unable to make my way through it. I'm ineffectual. I'm fundamentally unable to function the way normal people do. I had these dreams for YEARS before even beginning to think about them, that feeling of trying to do something but everything turning out wrong, uneven, I'm in the wrong place and the wrong time... nothing about that surprised me.
I realize that other people don't automatically feel like that. That just maybe, the fact that I'm a capable and successful human being should, could, translate into FEELING like a successful and human being, even subconsciously, even in my dreams. That's a completely alien idea to me.
So maybe it's a good first step that I'm recognizing this is odd? That I know consciously it doesn't necessarily have to be like this forever? But how do I defend against my brain and it's dreams?
I realize that other people don't automatically feel like that. That just maybe, the fact that I'm a capable and successful human being should, could, translate into FEELING like a successful and human being, even subconsciously, even in my dreams. That's a completely alien idea to me.
So maybe it's a good first step that I'm recognizing this is odd? That I know consciously it doesn't necessarily have to be like this forever? But how do I defend against my brain and it's dreams?
