@!#?@!
Over the last 18 months, I've largely been able to keep my mental health issues in check. In particular, going on medication last year has generally given me a sense of mental clarity. There are posters on the Tube at the moment promoting the concept of Mindfullness, which encourages people to focus their thoughts on the present. For the most part, I've succeeded in doing that.
The last 48 hours have been the most challenging for me to negotiate since the start of 2014. It's difficult to know how to pinpoint it exactly, but it's been something of a perfect storm of negative thinking.
I went on a date on Saturday night, my first one in 2015. Dates are still quite high pressure situations for me. I know anyone reading this might argue that dates are high pressure situations for anyone. Without going into specifics, I have been single for a long time. For an almost equally long time, I've wanted to be in a relationship. I have gone through spells where it has bothered me less, or I have been more appreciative of the freedoms of being single. But by and large it's something I've desired and something that I always feel the absence of.
For the past three years, I've posted the following as my Facebook status shortly after my first date of the year: "Just been on my annual date. See you in *insert next year here*, ladies!". Being self-deprecating on social media is pretty much my modus operandi. But it hides an uncomfortable truth, that I frequently work quite hard in dedicating time and energy to online dating with little return. Every encounter becomes heightened in the knowledge that I simply don't know how long I'll have to wait until the next one.
This date was perfectly fine and perfectly amicable but unlikely to go anywhere. Something she said to me towards the end has been rattling around my head for days. "It's quite clear to me from talking to you for the last three hours that you are a very negative person". I'm aware of the fact that I have negative tendencies but on that occasion I simply believed that I was being myself. On Monday, I deleted my OKCupid account on the basis that I'm not sure it's the best place to be using up my mental energy right now.
I've put all of my eggs in the online dating basket up to this point because it's theoretically simpler, the risks theoretically lessened. Even at 27, I'm shy and socially stunted, convinced that any approach to a member of the opposite sex would end in a catastrophe from which I would never recover. Or that I'm simply too fat for anyone to possibly be attracted to me. Simply articulating these thoughts suggests that my date had a point.
Quite clearly there is something in the way that I'm acting that pushes people away. Not just dates but friends and family too. I have for a fair while lived quite a solitary life. I spend a lot of time alone. It feels a bit cliche to point out that stand-up comedy is the pursuit of the loner, but it is. Even among stand-up comedians, I isolate myself.
I almost always go to gigs alone. A girl at the Kevin Devine gig on Wednesday asked me if I was there on my own, not out of any sort of sense of judgement but because generally speaking, that is unusual. At all of the gigs I go to, I look around at happy people, happy couples who have found some sort of meaningful connection with another human being. I wait desperately for the time between bands to end so I can lose myself in the music.
A second triggering event this week was an email confirming I had not been successful at a job interview last Thursday. It was a rejection that I had expected but it's a process that I've come to resent. Having 3-7 days to prepare for an interview. Terrified that I've overprepared. Terrified that I've underprepared. Convinced I'll commit some sort of terrible faux pas. Paranoid about the length and straightness of my tie.
I give it my best, I always do. Sometimes I flounder under the pressure. Sometimes I articulate myself poorly. Sometimes it's clear that I'm telling an story where I'm trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear because I lack the experience to answer their questions in the way that they would like.
I'm currently working with life coaches and job coaches. I have endless conversations with my parents who tell me that I have a lot to offer. It's almost impossible for me to agree with them, when time and time again I'm proved to not be good enough.
It's 2015 and I'm still on the outside looking in. But I have keep trying even though I feel like you've already lost. I want a career. I want a relationship. I want to lose weight. This week, the reminders of how far I am from achieving all of those things are too much for me to mentally handle.
The last 48 hours have been the most challenging for me to negotiate since the start of 2014. It's difficult to know how to pinpoint it exactly, but it's been something of a perfect storm of negative thinking.
I went on a date on Saturday night, my first one in 2015. Dates are still quite high pressure situations for me. I know anyone reading this might argue that dates are high pressure situations for anyone. Without going into specifics, I have been single for a long time. For an almost equally long time, I've wanted to be in a relationship. I have gone through spells where it has bothered me less, or I have been more appreciative of the freedoms of being single. But by and large it's something I've desired and something that I always feel the absence of.
For the past three years, I've posted the following as my Facebook status shortly after my first date of the year: "Just been on my annual date. See you in *insert next year here*, ladies!". Being self-deprecating on social media is pretty much my modus operandi. But it hides an uncomfortable truth, that I frequently work quite hard in dedicating time and energy to online dating with little return. Every encounter becomes heightened in the knowledge that I simply don't know how long I'll have to wait until the next one.
This date was perfectly fine and perfectly amicable but unlikely to go anywhere. Something she said to me towards the end has been rattling around my head for days. "It's quite clear to me from talking to you for the last three hours that you are a very negative person". I'm aware of the fact that I have negative tendencies but on that occasion I simply believed that I was being myself. On Monday, I deleted my OKCupid account on the basis that I'm not sure it's the best place to be using up my mental energy right now.
I've put all of my eggs in the online dating basket up to this point because it's theoretically simpler, the risks theoretically lessened. Even at 27, I'm shy and socially stunted, convinced that any approach to a member of the opposite sex would end in a catastrophe from which I would never recover. Or that I'm simply too fat for anyone to possibly be attracted to me. Simply articulating these thoughts suggests that my date had a point.
Quite clearly there is something in the way that I'm acting that pushes people away. Not just dates but friends and family too. I have for a fair while lived quite a solitary life. I spend a lot of time alone. It feels a bit cliche to point out that stand-up comedy is the pursuit of the loner, but it is. Even among stand-up comedians, I isolate myself.
I almost always go to gigs alone. A girl at the Kevin Devine gig on Wednesday asked me if I was there on my own, not out of any sort of sense of judgement but because generally speaking, that is unusual. At all of the gigs I go to, I look around at happy people, happy couples who have found some sort of meaningful connection with another human being. I wait desperately for the time between bands to end so I can lose myself in the music.
A second triggering event this week was an email confirming I had not been successful at a job interview last Thursday. It was a rejection that I had expected but it's a process that I've come to resent. Having 3-7 days to prepare for an interview. Terrified that I've overprepared. Terrified that I've underprepared. Convinced I'll commit some sort of terrible faux pas. Paranoid about the length and straightness of my tie.
I give it my best, I always do. Sometimes I flounder under the pressure. Sometimes I articulate myself poorly. Sometimes it's clear that I'm telling an story where I'm trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear because I lack the experience to answer their questions in the way that they would like.
I'm currently working with life coaches and job coaches. I have endless conversations with my parents who tell me that I have a lot to offer. It's almost impossible for me to agree with them, when time and time again I'm proved to not be good enough.
It's 2015 and I'm still on the outside looking in. But I have keep trying even though I feel like you've already lost. I want a career. I want a relationship. I want to lose weight. This week, the reminders of how far I am from achieving all of those things are too much for me to mentally handle.
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