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nate-walsh · 2 years ago

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super relatable

So, I'm super scared of people. And most things. I assume that's obvious?

See, that's part of the problem right there. In addition to just the general blind screaming terror when I'm around another person, I also have a huge blind spot about my own social energy

It's like – teeth. I used to have pretty crooked teeth (they're still kinda crooked), and I was very self-conscious about them. And so I started paying attention to everyone else's teeth, to see where I stacked up, and just how poorly I was ranked, anyway. [I still do this. Crest Whitestrips are realtively cheap and available, I'm just sayin'.]

But, like, it's kind of the same thing socially. I know I'm bad at this, so I've been studying up. I've read books, and I pay very close attention to people's subtleties – tone of voice, emphasis, body language, eye contact. But, like, it's studied. right? I actually have reasonably good social insight and intuition, I think – I can honestly probably give you some legit authentically legit good advice, either through harsh experience or decades of over-processing. Just not at all remotely as it relates to myself.

I just feel inherently repulsive – like, people can feel my anxiety and fear, and just kind of organically stay away, possibly even out of kindness. But also, like, I'm a lot of work, and what are you getting out of that? I think if you can look past my rat's nest of neuroses, I actually have a number of pretty good things about me. It's just – there are much much easier people to connect with. And I don't reveal what's special about me until at least like the 12th separate encounter.

But also, I could be wrong about all of this, is the problem. People say I'm fine socially and that I'm capable enough and loved by some at the very least. I hear them, but believing them is another story.

I actually think I'm very lovable. In preparation for my move back to the Bay Area, I bought this book – 21 Days To Fall In Love With Yourself – because, yeah, that's the type of person I am. But, like, I think I'm pretty OK already, as it turns out. I've got tons of shit, but ultimately, I like what I'm doing and think I'm a pretty good get. I just deeply truly believe that no one else could like it, and they're barely tolerating me.

And, well, after a hypnosis show back in Vegas, I kind of went down a rabbit hole that night into Manifestation Tik Tok. And, like, I don't believe in the woo-woo magical part of manifestation, but I think there is actually a simple rational logic to it: If your reasons and beliefs are aligned with your intentions, then your energy and actions kind of follow. If you're really really focused on falling in love, and you believe you deserve to fall in love, and you know what you want out of love, turns out love comes out the woodwork. Because you're just throwing yourself at it properly. But if there's any discrepancy or misalignment, it gets all fucked up. You want love, but really it's to fill some emptiness in you, and you'll take what you can get, and you just want validation, you will probably get stuck with some turds. I got stuck with some turds (but also some very great ones – both teams hopefully know who they are). Or when you're around people, you self-fulfill your prophecies, and you're dark and complainy and unpleasant to be around. And who the hell wants that.

I bought a magic rock recently. Yeah, exactly, that's how bad things have gotten. But, like, Instagram was pushing pretty hard on this one particular rock, across multiple weeks and instances, and anyway, boy, wouldn't it be great if your problems could just be solved by a rock? But anyway, it turns out it's an intention thing, too. You're supposed to think about the rock, and imagine it's reshaping you or bringing our your best qualities, and just in doing so, you start to move in that direction, you get positive feedback, you move more in that direction, etc. I see through your shit, magic rocks. But also, absolutely correct.

But, like, there's a little, hm, prayer is the wrong word – invocation? – that you're supposed to say multiple times per day to ~ activate ~ the rock. And I was noticing today that it says something about achieving your goals. And I was like, hey wait, what goals?

I don't have a lot of deep intent, it turns out. [Unless it's a crush, then I'm a fucking serial killer.] But mostly, I don't have a lot of wants. I don't want more things – frankly, the things I have are already way too much and intense and complex. If anything, I would like the absence of things. A little peace and quiet. Room to breathe. Not too much to process or be scared of. I guess that feels like anti-goals to me – you should want an abundance, not an absence.

[But, that being said, and we shouldn't should anyway, a super abundance is also acceptable. I take drugs and listen to devastating fuzzy guitars, because that's kind of what it feels like inside all of the time, and so, you know, at least it's something relatable?]

I don't know. I need to sit down and write some goals. Get the magic rock aimed the right way. I guess I mostly feel reactive – I have the one basic goal of survival (mostly), and I'm just trying to keep enough on top of shit to keep going. There's no room for want, it feels like. It feels like. But, like many of my feelings, it's probably not accurate to the rest of the reality.

So yeah – gonna write some goals. This weekend. This weekend.

Manic-depression is funny. You honestly get just the best of both worlds. I have so much energy for shit like this – I could write you a million billion unproofread paragraphs of rumination – but the muster for anything, like, tangible? Use a dating app, go exploring bars, watch a movie, go for a run, shower, unpack my shit? Nah, b. I'm too tired. Work is too much. I'm worn out by the move and Cat almost dying. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I just wish I could change my core feelings about things. Like, I've laid so much intellectual framework around the feelings, trying to manage and understand and compensate for them, but I wish I could change the core thing itself. I guess it's like any disability. Like, if I didn't have a leg, I'd be super focused on the lack of a leg and why don't I have one and how dare the universe and what can I do to make up for this. Or allergies. Or cancer. It's just like – this one feels like it should be in my control, is what's annoying. I can't control my cell mutation or a terrible car accident that happened. But it's my own damn brain. I should be in charge, damn it.

Anyway, I'm coming to the realization that, sure, yes, I've been trying. But it's been kind of bad trying, because I'm fighting against my fear and negativity and this invented perception that people think I'm a chore and a downer and too much and not enough. They haven't been authentic efforts, and people can feel that inauthenticity, and it's gross, and they stay away. I have to get right by myself, and what I really want, and why I really want it. And if there's fear, well, the fear is the same part of the whole rest of my team, good and bad. The same way I got blue eyes and a weird thing on my foot it looked ever grosser to remove. It's all on the team, and we've just gotta work with what we've got.

[This is called Mindfulness-Acceptance Therapy, and I was definitely taught about it by my therapist, and did a whole book about it, and explain it to others. But in the moment of crisis, my mind goes blank, and all the little tips and tricks go out the window. I totally forgot about this shit until now. Yeah! We're a team! Exactly!]

I kind of want to be like the guy in Memento, where just key bits of mental health reminders are tattooed all over my body. "Gotta love everything, even if it's going to be gone someday." "Gotta have experiences." "Kindness can overcome anxiety, if you remember to do it." I actually do have the one tattoo – it's a symbol reminding me to stay positive. But you forget to look at them after a while.

I need routines. I need to get back in the habit of certain things. Meditating. Running. Guitar. Eating. The only thing I pretty much absolutely consistently do everyday is Duolingo, because I don't want to let down Dúo the Owl. I need a Dúo for all the basic functions of my life.

OK, but this isn't rumination. [Which I would define as overthinking that doesn't go anywhere.] This is level-setting and problem-solving and goal-setting. I'm kind of recognizing where I've been of late, and why. And self-pity isn't moving the needle one goddamn bit. These are my feelings, these are my handicaps, this is the hand I've been dealt. Deal with it. Everyone else does. Just do the stuff. Not in spite of the feelings, but with them, as part of your package.

Fwoof. Have I mentioned how tired I am, though?

It feels like I'm trying so hard to just be a person, and I'm not even any good at it. And just, I wasn't built for this. But again, self-pity isn't helping.

I just – I don't think I'm a very strong person. Like, if you grew up in an abusive household, some people are a mess, and they repeat the pattern. But some people work in opposition to that energy. Or they see it as the gritty surface that shaped them into the cool person they are now. That's what I need to be doing. It's just – I don't want to.

Like, think about zombie movies. Everyone is fighting so hard to stay alive. And it's like, why? It's so much work, and it's scary, and there's so little good left in the world, what are you still going for? Basic biological impulse. Well, my biology is fucked, and it tells me to give up and give in all the time.

Like, if we talk about manifestation, if we really go to the heart of who I am, I am not super committed to this reality. So, like, how is anything ever going to align? OK, no wait, this is rumination.

And just – I can't talk about it with anyone too much, because I already talk about it too much, and I'm a downer and a drip and a discomfort. And, well, no, this isn't me gearing up to off myself or anything. I've committed myself to hanging on. But, like, I'm going off of other people's faith on that. When your gut is constantly telling you unhelpful things, you can't trust your guts. And so what? You have to trust other people, when so many of them are liars or deluded or uh shall-we-say strategic. I don't know. It's really an issue of love. I have to love the people I love, and I have to believe they love me, and I have to trust them when they say that I'm OK and I'm loved and life is worth it and dying before my time would be a waste and a devastation. I just wasn't raised very faithful.

It's not that everything's terrible. It's just a lot of it IS bad, and I can't help but notice. I'm bad at thinking around it or compartmentalizing or distracting. There are good things, and I try to be grateful for them, because that's supposed to help. It's just – a lot of work for the good things, and are they really that good that they're worth the effort?

Anyway, I'm fine. The random dice roll in my brain that is my daily mood just came up snake eyes today. Maybe tomorrow will be a lucky one. Maybe you can load the dice.

Well, I'm not editing this right now, that's for damn sure. Unless people somehow still be checkin' they RSS feeds, this will probably go unnoticed. I don't know. I can't write freely about things. But yes. I absolutely can. It doesn't have to be public. I just kind of want it to be.

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nate-walsh · 2 years ago

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I wasn't around people for 7 years so I didn't have to have a blog for 7 years

well, anyway – I'm back, baby! I NEED TO PUBLICLY PROCESS MY FEELINGS OUT LOUD IN THE VAGUE HOPES THAT YOU MIGHT SEE THEM

and then you'll have some idea what's going on with me

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nate-walsh · 2 years ago

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Duolingo is making me rethink how my brain works

I'm kind of discovering I’m used to navigating life in narrative format

[which, I always kind of knew that, but now I’m naming it and realizing there are alternatives]

so, by contrast, I think some people think their thoughts as a series of images

[or maybe no specific format at all, they just do shit instinctively?]

I don’t ~quite~ have aphantasia – I can picture things in my head, but I have to put a little, like, ungh, effort in

as a result, though, I think, the way I generally get around instead is I narrate everything out loud to myself in my head

like, quite possibly everything

I have bigger, louder narratives going, about what I’m currently doing or what I need to do or what I’m worried about or horny for or whatever

but I think I am also constantly quietly low-key naming every object around me and relaying to myself tiny stories about what they’re all like

which I think is my way of trying to organize and soften a chaotic scary world

[god, what a waste of processing power!]

BUT OKAY

the thing I’m discovering with Spanish is

I can’t narrate fast enough to totally operate in my normal narrative mode

like, I can’t do Spanish at speed yet

but! it turns out there is an unnarrated way I can think, that has better, faster access to my Spanish knowledge

like, if I look at a tough Spanish exercise with my conscious day-to-day narrating brain, I’m like, “god, there’s no way I could translate that”

but, if I don’t totally think about it, I can totally do it!

same with guitar:

I think normally when I’m playing, I’m literally always naming all the shit to myself – these chords, this rhythm, that hand shape, whatever

which, I can narrate reasonably fast, but not THAT fast – so I’m slowing me down, for the sake of anxiety-reduction

if I can not do that, and get into muscle memory or instinct or flow state or whatever this other kind of thinking is

I can play much better

but the second I start to think about it the way I normally do, I mess up

so, my question for you is, what do we call this other type of processing, and how can I access it more easily?

right now it’s sort of like “don’t think about crocodiles”

as soon as I start to get into that headspace, I start to narrate that I’m in it, and, poof, I’m out of it

I have to get mostly mentally neutral, but slightly directed towards what I want to do

I’ve never done a Magic Eye before, but I imagine it’s kind of like that?

anyway, HELP

sorry if everyone else already figured this out in college or whatever

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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I need to remind myself that it's actually kind of fun being a mess.

I realize I’m kind of way too old for it, but if I can’t help it either way, might as well enjoy it.

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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I find myself talking less and less.

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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wow, when did this become so true

“this is a race to the end, and I don’t intend to win it, baby”

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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So, there is this Mexican apple soda called SIDRAL MUNDET that Kevin and I were weirdly obsessed with back in school. See, the thing about SIDRAL MUNDET is that we honestly couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. We’d take a drink, and be like, “Is this delicious? Do I hate this? I don’t know!” So we’d take another drink to try and figure it out. “God, man, I still don’t know!” So we’d take another drink, and another, until the bottle was gone. And then we’d buy another bottle to try and solve the mystery.

This is the SIDRAL MUNDET of songs for me. I’m pretty sure it’s terrible – other people have told me it’s terrible; I can honestly recognize all the things about it that are terrible – but I keep coming back to it. Part of that is the chorus – as I’ve probably mentioned, I am a sucker for a good chorus, to a fault. I have completely disregarded what are probably great songs because they lacked a solid chorus, and I have tolerated some real trash because it had a good one. And I definitely like this one. But oh man, the rest of the song. Every line of the song is sung as if it is from a completely different line than the previous one – just wild jumps in pitch and speed and intensity. The lyrics are fucking trite as shit. There is a, like, 2 minute super masturbatory atonal tribal percussion solo tacked onto the end. It’s trash, but something about it keeps making me go, “But maybe it isn’t?” So I take another sip.

(The video is the same way! It’s all kind of weird and off-putting – and I cannot believe they kept the drum bit in it – but it’s not visually uninteresting.)

I looked up a few of the band’s other songs, and they are all inarguably shitty, so maybe I should just go with the data and write this off. But there’s even something in their shittiness. I think it’s the purity of their vision. These aren’t bad songs because they are generic or boring. There is real confidence in what they’re doing – they know exactly what they want to do, and they’re executing on it flawlessly. They just have exactly all the wrong instincts. I find this fascinating. Like all the great bad art, you really have to mean it to do this bad of a job.

Anyway, I’m going to go listen to it again, I guess. I’m pretty sure I’ll crack it this time.

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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a portrait of me and Cat

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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ugh writing is so inadequate sometimes

my emotions can be big, towering

or constant, agonizing

and all I can do is put them into neat, orderly paragraphs

it’s inauthentic

there should be a messier way to convey feelings than sentences

...

I guess that’s why we have music and art and, you know, all the other methods of human expression

just

I chose writing as my thing, OK? and sometimes it feels like my toolbox is a little lacking

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nate-walsh · 5 years ago

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Today was going to have been my wedding day.*

It feels like I should say something about that. But I’m not exactly sure what.

It’s been a bit over 5 months since Elli and I split up, and I’m, you know, fine. Through the worst of it, I suppose. The acute pain of having lost someone has gone, but there’s still this persistent ache – one I kind of don’t see going away for a while. Maybe not ‘til someone comes along to fill the hole she left.

It’s a weird time to be alone, with social distancing in full effect. I’m, like, Extra Strength Alone. Pretty much everyone else I know has family or friends or roommates or a partner they’re holed up with. And right now, I envy them. I’m not a big people person, but even I have my limits. I feel like I’m starting to go a little loopy from the isolation – it would be nice to have some company, a partner in crime, someone to keep me steady and keep steady in turn (or, barring that, someone to go crazy with).

It’s not just about the isolation, though. I miss Elli specifically. Her kindness. Her cheeriness. Her bad jokes. Her love and reassuring presence. Her enthusiasm to match my own. We’re still close – we’re still good friends, and we stiIl talk every day, and that’s already way more than I was hoping to wind up with after all of this. But, you know, this was a person I had and loved and spent most of my time with for the past 5 years. I feel the lack of her.

I have this app that you hook all your social media up to, and it shows you what happened on this day in history over the years. I won’t lie, as a nostalgia monster prone to a lot of romantic misadventures, the thing is always a little brutal, but it’s been particularly rough the week leading up to our would-be wedding. I see the record of our little adventures, of our day-to-day routines, and it’s weird that it’s never going to be like that again. I think some small stupid part of me still thinks this is just a long, tough trial we’re going through, and then we’ll get back to where we were. (Don’t worry, I know that’s dumb.) Mostly, though, I miss the life we had – and regret the loss of the life we were going to have. I can still picture that life so clearly, I think is the problem – I guess because nothing has come in to replace it.

I don’t know. It’s hard not to be pessimistic about the future. Here I am, this late in the game, and I’m starting over at square one. (Actually, at the moment, it’s more like square zero, because I can’t even take tentative steps towards finding a new person.**) Right now, it all just seems so far away and so unlikely. I know I’m just not in the right headspace, but it feels like there’s no way I’m ever finding something like that ever again – that I’ll probably just run out the rest of my life alone. I’m 35, and I’m not that cute, and I’m a tough sell on my best days – weird and moody and so often closed off and distant. And even if I did find someone to tolerate my presence, who’s to say they’d be half as simpatico as Elli and I were. We never fought. We were on the same page about almost everything. A real team and a real family. It just feels so… improbable… that it could happen again.

If you’re familiar with my blog, you’d know this is the part where I’d equivocate, counterarguing everything I just said as a way of ensuring I’m telling as balanced of a story as possible. Bring some positivity into the equation. “It’s OK! People start over all the time! Plenty of fish in the sea! Think of all the people you know who found their person, even after years of thinking they wouldn’t!” And that’s all fair – I always feel like I’m this big weird outlier, but there’s plenty of evidence I’m not. It’s just – maybe I just feel like being sad for a minute. Maybe I just need to mourn, with no pep talks or silver linings. It’s not what comes naturally to me – I’m always trying to spin things positive – but maybe I just need a day or two of lament. Better out than in.

* Of course, even if we hadn’t called things off, we still would have had to postpone. “Think of how sad we would have been,” I said to Elli the other day. “I’m still pretty sad,” she said back.

** Truth be told, I’m still not sure I’m actually ready, even if dating was a possibility. Getting back out there is maybe the healthy thing to do, but right now, it just feels like putting that last nail in the coffin of what I used to have. And even though I know that things are really and truly done either way, it’s still hard severing that last tie to her. (He says, mixing his metaphors.) As hard as it is, that pain means I still have some sort of connection to her, and it's hard to let that go.

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