The funny thing about this avoidant business is that, if you don’t or can’t maintain yourelf in a kind of zone every day, seven days a week, the old habits are practically guaranteed to return.

The old habit that gets me into the most trouble is the one I’ve had my whole life: ignoring my own feelings and trying to live “out of body,” whether due to shame or not having the bandwidth or internal resource to deal with intensely painful or negative feelings. This goode ship “my body and life” is an existance plagued by negative feelings and downright pain. These negative implications will only end when I end, and join the dear cosmos and nothingness.

To summarize, I travelled with my family for a week, then we had a guest over during the next week, who occupied my office. To work, I decided to go to Starbucks, especially as I didn’t feel comfortable hanging around our small apartment. Our guest didn’t seem to have much of an agenda (or much money) so she chose to hang around our apartment all day as well. The fact she’s an attractive, blonde female in her early twenties added to my discomfort in spending every day at close quarters, especially since I’m married.

Now I began to understand the difficulty I would have were I to get a full time job and spend all day out of the house. How could I begin to relax myself to a state, every day, where I could effectively deal with my feelings? The truth is, I’m right back to before starting this diary and trying to confront my problem. After some time of trying to avoid my own self it’s hard if not impossible to return to a previous state of relaxed openness.

Fighting square one

Despite what my father said about me being very social and open to people as a child, as an adult I have many problems in social situations. It’s sometimes breathtaking to behold my own inability to feel sufficiently comfortable around people to make any positive contributions.

A case in point was a week ago at a dinner with some friends. A few years ago I met a very well-adjusted banker whom I befriended, which led to his girlfriend and my wife also starting a friendship. I noticed my friend seems to have gained some ambiguous feelings about me as the years went on; it seems he has caught on to my social issues and inabilities and probably thinks I have the capability to embarass him, for which he is absolutely right.

His girlfriend and my wife arranged for us to all have dinner at a restaurant with his visiting parents (he and I would have never arranged such a meeting, unless it would be for us to go over to his house). I had met his parents two years before so after greeting them, we all sat down.

I tried to engage them in conversation and began with a question about when was the last time they had visited their son. After they told me, I mentioned it must be nice for them to come back, especially to see how their son has changed. Now, for a bit of context, his last marriage had been a disaster (having divorced a few months after marrying). He went through a hard period before meeting his present girlfriend, and he’s doing all he can to start a family with her (it seems) by buying a house and settling down.

But when I made that statement about the changes in my friend, I didn’t provide any context. He just stared at me, expressionless, and so did his father. I felt immediately ashamed and in social situations when this happens, I freeze. His father then immediately turned to him and said “yeah he’s gained weight” and they both laughed.

Oh fuck what did I just say, was all that was going through my mind. I didn’t mean the weight part, though I both couldn’t justify my remark and had wanted to sound witty so I guess the whole thing ended on a laugh of sorts. Honestly though, there’s a kind of distance between he and I, which he doesn’t have with his other friends, and which I think is tied to my issue. Since we have both been very busy and didn’t have time to meet individually, I of course couldn’t explain my “gaffe.” So he probably thinks I meant that he put on weight and embarassed him in front of his father.

The upshot

Anyway these are the typical gaffes I make as an adult, which at the very least make me regret my actions and behavior, and cause me to maintain a sense of social shame throughtout my entire life. It’s very hard to get over, and keeps me emotionally stunted in a way. The scenario above does clarify some aspects though; it’s easy to see why I hid myself all these years, and why I enjoy solitude despite loneliness.

It is utterly amazing how such incidents keep happening to me though… to what extent is my shame about them justified, and to what extent are they just in my head? If an outsider were viewing the scene, what would he think? It seems such questions are the best way to cope but they are incredibly hard to answer. No one (I think) overheard my comment besides us three, so it’s not like I can ask an observer.