Survived Going to a Book Club
Tuesday-Thursday has just been a whammy emotionally.
Tuesday I met up with some other volunteers of the help desk I've been volunteering with for the past 5 years for dinner. It took 2 hours each way for me with public transit. It seemed to go okay. I know these old ladies mean well but socializing is just so hard and scary.
Wednesday I had therapy and ended up crying after session some. New thing is apparently that I feel upset that my dad never bothered to help me cultivate the skills he praises people (like himself) for having, and having to play the role of his little girl while also being an adult and magically having these marketing-yourself skills is just taxing. Probably demand sensitivity at play again among other dad feelings in general about him being a sad old man who's going to retire and then die in the next two or three decades and he's never going to figure out how to have real friends that will be with him on his deathbed so it's up to us. Some of that is old news but the "then why didn't you teach me or parent me" is a somewhat new flavor.
Wednesday night I couldn't sleep much due to anxiety about having to do another social thing. Ended up reading a bad comic ill-advisedly. Some of the comments gave ample warning but I was like "why does it have a 8/10 rating then". Cue 70 chapters or something later at which point all of the comments below the chapters are like "WHY?!", which I also understood very much then. Why indeed. Apparently "black flag" is a term that means "red flag but worse"?
Got like 4 hours of sleep. Didn't do much today besides draw a bit and wait around for this book club to happen. No studying has been done these past like 3 days due to all of the anxiety.
Book club was fine. Lots of break out sessions. Managed to talk a bit though I was definitely dissociating the entire time, as I always do in social situations.
Talk was mostly about the ideas of the book in relation to people's lives in making change and not the narrative structure or themes and the like that you would do in a lit class. Joined the Signal group. People who I don't even know if I met this book session talking about wanting to be a community and stuff. That's all very admirable but part of me is very cynical and wondering what a community even means to begin with or if I can even live in such a setup. I guess I've never had one, so.
This older man drove me to the station and he said he was diagnosed as crazy for having bipolar. He had COPD and talked by taking a lot of breaths for air in between. He also switched in and out of many different English accents, and when I said he was good at doing voices because I thought it was intentional he said that it was because he was part of a military family and he's lived in many places and has issues remembering which language he's speaking. Now thinking that my comment was really thoughtless but I didn't apologize or anything in the moment just kind of nodded. I also don't know what the proper thing to say to someone who comes out with a diagnosis they have is. Like clearly it shouldn't be like coddling or "that sucks" or whatever because it might not actually suck for them. But if you're like "that's cool" that might also not be cool for them. So I just nod. And feel awkward because I don't know how to convey "yeah, that's real". I always wonder whether they think that I think they're boring which is not what I'm trying to say. I don't know what I would want someone to say to me regarding my stuff. It's just always awkward.
He also apparently lived under the Franco regime? And was talking about how pointless he found the arguments about whether Franco was an authoritarian dictator or fascist etc. I didn't quite catch everything but he's an interesting person. Though I have no idea how old that makes him then, since I'm not very good at international history but apparently the Franco regime ended in 1975. I didn't think he was like 80 for instance. Probably there's other context I'm missing.
He said he wanted me to come back to the book club and said he hoped he didn't scare me and I said he didn't but like, TBH after so many years of living as a woman any man offering to give me a ride on the first meeting is somewhat scary. His bipolar or whatever has nothing to do with that. My sister and her boyfriend said that in general I shouldn't get into cars with strangers period and that getting into someone's car in an attempt to not be bigoted is not really praxis anyway.
I could have mentioned that my mom has bipolar but she's a very bad example of a human being so I didn't say anything lol. I'm still feeling kind of dumb about the car thing. It's like the thing where you feel dumb for doubting someone who is kind but also if something happened to you (on the <1% chance) you would feel dumb for falling for social norms like that because as a culture we love victim blaming. Sigh.
Anyway. I managed to talk twice in the group (about 10 or so people). I seemed to be on the younger side? I did bad at socializing though, I'm so bad about asking follow up questions or offering tidbits about myself and the like. This old man told me I should socialize more and I told him that it's hard for me because I have social anxiety and nearly started crying at that moment lol. He then gave me motivational words about breathing which was like, sure, but I feel a bit awkward about this.
So that was a club. I'll keep dragging myself out to it and see if anything gets easier. At least it's an excuse to read good books. I can't believe I'm actually doing exposure therapy now. It kind of really sucks mentally but I have to keep doing it. I feel so unsafe right now for literally no reason just that I had to talk to people and guess at all of their possible expectations for how our talks would go. This was harder than the dinner which was already hard. Exhausted.