|
|
Friday, Sept. 12, 2003 - 9:41 p.m. A HOUSE REBUILT This week was busy as usual, and my personality at the office is becoming distinct. I seem to be the brunt of many jokes, mainly because they claim they "love" me. Members of my team have told me that I am laid-back and easy to joke with--or about. A co-worker who knew me when I started at the office said that I am the direct opposite of the personality I had when I started. I must admit that much of this change has to do with all the therapy that I have undergone over the past year that has basically desensitized me to whatever anxiety I once felt around people. Even after I was medically treated for bipolar disorder, my basic interpersonal patterns of behavior remained. I still did not trust people and, for the most part, believed I would be better off without them. Intimate relationships, love, romance, or whatever, seemed like some cruel figment of my imagination. When I was diagnosed with this illness, I have to admit, I was slightly angry for having been deceived by it for my entire life. My insidious hidden depressions and disguised manic episodes forced me to try to make sense of a world that did not exist. In the process of making sense of it, I redefined my reality with a warped and twisted understanding of human interaction. I lived in fear of the emotional harm others might inflict upon me. My fear shut me in and did not allow me to grow in ways normal people have grown. When I was diagnosed and shown that this amusement park in my head had completely blinded me to reality, I wanted to hide from everyone because I was embarrassed for how I had been. I wanted to start fresh, forget about everyone I knew, and begin a whole new life. Up until I met Speed out of nowhere in that bar, building the future while hiding from my past had been my strategy. In result, I was trying to build a house with no materials. I was trying to make friends without knowing anyone. I was expecting this "new self" that I had conjured up in my hiding to be able to drum up a vibrant social network out of nothing. Speed and I have only exchanged two or three e-mails, but that is not the point. It is a start. I am noticing that the language her e-mail has drastically changed and that she is sounding like her old self. The same flaky sophomore that hung all over me in college simply because I ignored her on purpose. Speed is a Baton Rouge native. She has childhood friends in this city. She went to an all-girls high school. She has inroads to a mid-twenties Baton Rouge crowd that to me has been impossible to find. I must find a way to tap into her network. I believe I know how she ticks, and I am confident I can make it happen. However, I still believe she is flaky. I will never "like" her in any other way beyond that of a casual friendship. In a similar strike of luck, a blast from the past hit me two nights ago. I was getting ready to go to bed when my phone rang. My roommate from Houston, who I had only spoken once to since I had left, called me to invite me to go with him to the LSU game tomorrow night. He was the same roommate I lived with when I underwent my first therapy, went manic, and then got totally bombed out on medication and had to eventually leave because I could not hold down my job. In other words, he had seen me at my absolute worst. He was always a very nice guy, the shy type--in fact, I believe he is on Paxil. He always seems to have a silent understanding of the difficulties I had been going through. However, when I had left Houston, I foolishly left our friendship behind with the apartment. I just wanted to forget about the person I was, and in the process, forget about all the people I once knew.Now he calls me out of the blue to invite me to a football game. Apparently, he lives in New Orleans now and works for a firm there. This bodes well for me as most of my extended family is from New Orleans. Therefore, I can easily visit New Orleans and hang out with him on most weekends. He is not the most sociable guy--but any decent guy, as far as I am concerned, especially a guy like him who makes decent money, can be the consummate wingman. So tomorrow I plan to work most of the day until mid-afternoon. Then I plan to meet him at a tailgate party and go to the game with him afterward. Perhaps now a house can be built. |