I hope Brent and Renee and the girls have a nice time at your house, and that there are no tragic or even slightly unpleasant accidents.
As to why I put myself into strange social situations, I want to get myself into as many different kinds of social situations as possible, within reason, because I think it's healthy for me. It feels related to being alive, flexible, and to growing and changing, as opposed to being stagnant, drying up, and withering away. My natural inclination through my whole life has been to isolate myself and withdraw, to a degree that most people can't relate to at all. I'm feeling that if I continued to give in to those tendencies on a regular basis, it would spell some kind of death. I definitely dread most social engagements, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on my emotional condition at the time, and what the social engagement is. On the other hand, once I'm actually interacting with people, and afterwards, I'm usually glad I did it, for at least part of the time. It feels like the equivalent of having a little Wd 40 squirted on my hinges, as opposed to having them rust up just a little more. Sometimes it's painful, and many times, these social engagements trigger some kind of weird negative emotional reaction in me somewhere along the line, but I'm finding that is also interesting in a way. It's like plowing ground and continually unearthing grubs, rusty nails, and various insect varmints. But I'm trying to deal with those things. It feels like the alternative is to end up becoming a desolate, sun baked chunk of hard pan dirt, containing no life whatsoever.
I think anxiety runs in our family, but maybe it runs in every family. Mira was actually a pretty anxious person, at least towards the end. My mom was an anxiety magnet. I feel a lot of anxiety too, a lot of the time. I think most people carry a lot more anxiety than they realize. They try to mask it or make it go away by trying to stay as active and busy and entertained as possible so they are distracted from it most of the time. That anxiety doesn't go away, any more than getting drunk would make an infection go away. It festers and comes out in all sorts of others ways that don't necessarily feel like anxiety at all -- various physical ailments, difficulty concentrating, depression, sleeplessness, and stuff like that. These days, I'm not trying so much to avoid anxiety, as to really feel it when it comes, gathered there in my belly like a nest of wasps. Anxiety is like a person inside me, a part of me. Who are you? I ask it. What do you want? Where did you come from? Here, take a seat, have a cup of coffee, let's talk.....
Ouch, that sounds like a painful fall onto the rocks, while carrying stuff in each arm. You're lucky you didn't knock all your teeth out.
Speaking of ancestors turning in their graves, a lot of cultures and religions spent a lot of time trying to appease the spirits of the dead. It's huge in African and Asian cultures. The ancestors are constantly moaning and groaning and wondering why you disappointed them, and why you're not listening to them and caring for them and honoring them. And in the short spaces of time when they are at peace, they say nothing. They only communicate when they are upset. I can, and do, say that I don't care about dead relatives tossing and turning in their graves because of what I do or don't do. Let them flip around down there all they want, not that I believe that any of them are concerned with such trivial shit once they leave this earthy plane. On the other hand, I know that when we are kids we swallow some version of our parents, and maybe other influential relatives, and those little living figurines keep moving around in there as long as we live, clawing around in our psyches.
--edward
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