Book Club Log #13
I didn't forget to take my propranolol today!!! That's the most important thing to remember because last month I was freakin' out and wondering wtf why until the next day when I saw the pills in my Thursday compartment had been forgotten.
In other words, that was anxiety-brain me talking. New day new pills new me! ...Is what I would like to say, but the truth is that anxiety is somewhat inescapable and I felt the usual amount of disoriented and also very very sleepy. The next question is whether I'm sleepy because I've been stressed with the flea situation at home or because I somehow took 2 doses of propranolol or something. Wouldn't that be funny? No way to check, though, since I don't place my afternoon dose in a special compartment -- I just take it straight from the pill bottle since taking a double dose isn't a cause for concern with how low my dosing is.
We had like three new people today, all who were very talkative. I did do some amount of talking, so good job me. I ended up sitting next to Keeps Inviting People Guy or whatever I named him last time, again, because I ended up sitting in the same seat and he chose the same seat too. He's a pretty fine conversation partner. The more I talk to him the more I get the impression that he's nice and is also kindly doing the talking when I obviously stall out very awkwardly. At some point Cool Earrings (today it was cube stacked on another cube) came in late and joined our trio. But again, I was one of the only people who had finished reading the book. Keeps Inviting People Guy apparently reads three books at once, which is why he hadn't finished it. Also, luckily for Cool Earrings, he liked Demon Copperhead, he just couldn't make it to that book club meeting because he was sick.
The book was Everything for Everyone by M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi. I liked it and felt like I was on board for almost everything, so some parts of it almost felt too basic for me. Still, it was at least something that I could talk about. The discussion this time was actually robust and on topic, perhaps thanks to someone who came last time but whose name I cannot recall, who did some very obvious conversation steering at like 3 different points. Good for her, honestly. I'll call her Helmsman for that.
Other standouts were a new person invited by Teacher Guy (who was not there today), who had a really nice balance between extraverted chill and also on-topic discussion. I feel like I've witnessed people who are maxed out on the first without the second, so it was interesting to see someone I immediately liked and felt at ease with.
There were like two new gender-diverse people but I don't actually know how to start conversations with people so I kinda didn't really talk to them during the socializing time. I ended up talking more to Keeps Inviting People Guy, who humored me. Am I ever going to get better at small talk? I feel like I need to read a how-to book at some point and be forcefed some routine scripts and figure out how much of myself I can share.
I will say that for as much as Conflict Is Not Abuse is an absolute shit-tier book that says nothing aligned with its title, it did give me the chance to go on a little rant when I shot down the Act Up book as a possible read for book club, which is probably the most animated and personable I've ever been in book club. The spite is very motivating, sometimes.
I didn't talk to Multiple Names Guy today, but I feel somewhat bad at freaking out about him last month just because I didn't take my meds. Recently I've had to endure like 6 consecutive hours of a guy I super dislike, and that whole experience has, funnily enough, reminded me that I am free to actively shoot down other people's attempts at conversation with me if I don't like the topic. All the ire concentrated at this Annoying Conservative Pokemon-Facts Yapper has really led me to do some thinking about what about certain people make me nervous, and it truly is this idea of "expectation" from men in particular that makes me overthink things. Of course, there's other types of people I strike out with for other reasons, but "Nerdy Guy Who Seems to Be More Interested In Me Than I Am In Him And Who Probably Sees Me As Nothing More Than A Woman, Anyway" is certainly a type of guy I've encountered a few times over my life that have always made me ??? in my head. That said, Multiple Names Guy is a fairly benign version of this when I remember Annoying Yapper, and as long as I remember that and the magic words of "I can simply refuse to talk and walk out," that should maybe help my overactive brain from doing the PANIC! WHAT IF SINGLE GUY HAS EXPECTATIONS OF ME!! anxiety wheel.
The hard part of anxiety is that you often just invent problems for yourself. Or at least I do. I know there's some people out there with Legitimate, Fact-based Anxiety for things that are Definitely Occurring, but that's not my brand of anxiety.
My biggest thought is that I wish I could just take more propranolol but that'd probably make my blood pressure too low. So sad! I also wish they would invent a version of Zoloft that didn't give me side effects, but such is the case with magic fixes: They are simply too good to be true. I am #coping and I will #survive even though every time book club comes around I'm like "noooo waaaah I don't want to goooooo talk to People who aren't my friends." I have survived 13 times and I can survive another 13 more. Almost no one will remember me 5 years from the last time they've seen me. This, too, will pass, and I will...make it through and have some book conversations. Perhaps. There's so many things I think I could be doing better, but I probably won't put in the effort to do so because it's just not very high on my priority list. We struggle with the imperfection, but it's simply our reality. Future me will either figure this out or do nothing, and that is something I will just have to live with either way.