I think I’ve hit my threshold for people at the moment.I feel like I’m a balloon that’s been filled too full of air and all of a sudden I’ve popped from all that built up pressure. As soon as I got home, I just flopped over into bed and felt like rolling up into a ball and dying. I wouldn’t have minded if a plane fell from the sky and crash-landed on my house, crushing me underneath. I feel mentally and physically drained, tense all up and down my back. My heart is trying to beat out of my chest and my stomach is thrashing all about inside of me right now.
Standing back and looking at why I have only so much tolerance for large groups of people, I’m starting to see into why that threshold is there in a first place. After spending so much time around so many people, ironically, I start to feel more alone than ever. I’m a “one-on-one” type of person. I connect best with people when it’s just one person at a time. Really, since the New Year started, I haven’t had the chance to build a personal connection with anybody. Lately, it’s been more of a cocktail party kind of mentality. I wander around, spend a few minutes with this person then a few minutes with that person. I’m constantly moving from one person to the next. In a way, that’s really overwhelming for me. There’s all these people, but I’m not really getting deep with anybody. I’m just uncovering a bit of what’s on the surface across a broad expanse of people. I’m not taking time to sit down with anybody in particular. After so much of that, it just feels like I’m in a room full of cardboard cutout people. I feel alone.
I forgot what it was like to have a truly deep conversation. To truly connect with someone. To just share the carpet with somebody, lying on my back, and stare at the ceiling as I talk about nothing in particular. To just float along with nothing to anchor me to the earth but the voice of the other person, something cardboard cutouts can’t do.
I used to spend time like that with Amanda all the time, back when I wasn’t bogged down with nursing school. She’d call me up around 2 in the morning and we’d walk down to the Bryan Fine Arts and lie on the benches in the lobby and ramble about life. To me, that’s what life is all about. Bethany coming over this weekend reminded me of that; what it was like to take time and sit down and appreciate life. Truthfully, I was a little sour from the philosophy meeting I was at tonight. I was spending time with her at my house, but I left a little early so that I could prepare for leading a discussion on Siddartha, since I had committed myself to it. The discussion never happened and Bethany left for home before I got out of the meeting.
I’m over it now. I spent plenty of quality time with her as it was, so I can’t really complain. Just a few minutes lost isn’t going to kill me. If she hadn’t decided to randomly pop up this weekend, I probably would have gone insane from nursing school. I think I’ll finish off this post with some of the things this week that have helped me to appreciate life in this stressful time: Mary Ellen’s MAGIC cookies, cooking chili with Justin, protecting Bethany from the zombies at the deserted Cookeville Mall, sitting out on the deck in the morning and sipping tea, miscellaneous hugs.
Ok, time to sleep. Night.
