Rare Kind of Social Butterfly

It was a rare busy weekend for me. One kid with a high fever and cranky stomach. My oldest nephew Thomas coming over to play Chess with the younger nephew Marcus. Two new pet additions, cats we named She-Ra and Seven. So there was no drawing or writing but it was a weekend I needed lots of K-cup lattes and cappuccinos to function on. 

I don't initiate social situations yet it's also rare that I'll turn them down unless I'm just completely rundown. I know I'll end up talking too much and too loudly and end up nursing a sore throat, but I'll also have zero trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep once the mania passes. It's not a bad issue to have unless I get overwhelmed and forget to set boundaries or hesitate to excuse myself to take a breather. 

What I didn't do was forget to take notes. I've set up some ideas for short stories, digital painting practice and NaNoWriMo Prep. What always made things too overwhelming in the past was not seizing those moments. I would go weeks, months, years, not drawing, writing, listening to music-- daydreaming but never 'getting around to it.' It never occurred to me that I'd taken everything I heard adults were supposed to be too literally and creating this hysterical void that removed my personality, made me irritable and unbearable to be around. 

I've talked about before what became turning points. Going to school wasn't a fix-all right away. Too much built up, too much bottled up, too much zipped and buttoned up. Several months in, I was asked to commit myself when suicidal thoughts became vivid, planned, uncontrollable. I was happier than I'd been in years but it didn't erase the bad habits I'd trained into that were still degrading me, the damage finally catching up.

I fought like a mad woman for my true self. It was terrifying because I had to become selfish even though I was raising kids. Yet I was risking damaging them if I continued patterns of self-sacrifice and blaming others for that misery. Taking an extremity in selfishness was not the counterbalance. Yet I had to say no to others to become happy and useful to others. True common sense had jack shit to do with the self-help mantras that amount to misquoted sound bites on the internet. True common sense often sounds counterintuitive and hypocritical, yet you have to remove the simplifications and describe it to parse it out.

The ''overthinking" was actually an asset in a culture to used to under thinking. When I stopped dumbing down things that just didn't work for me, I found my strengths were in the excess of less socially accepted traits. Yet when I defended how they work for me, I found true friends, my voice and the ability to show people how to embrace their own niche perspectives.

There are simple adages that you can be confident in. First do no harm. Do unto  others as you would have done unto you. These need no elaboration. But throwing out context of origin for other ideas (don't cry over spilled milk) can end up misleading. You can experience and react to regret. The idea that you can't look or feel weak is not the right mindset. Yet you don't want to spend your life crying over a sour puddle you didn't clean up or respilling it to seek pity or continue the remorse. We do see messages that need interpretation, ideas that,if simplified, should at least be self-aware in their potential for misunderstanding. So count your chickens before they hatch-- prepare for good fortune just as much as ill. People blow windfall lottery winnings without preparing for them. So many lessons were written for the overly optimistic, those not preparing for the long winter, but those lessons don't carry over well for those already cynical and not sure how to take good fortune.

The academically and creatively gifted-- though we can seem sagely with common sense, we can be impulsive to the contrary in our youth. We probably made people obsessed with our weird minds then disappeared to leave bitterness when we didn't think to explain the price of that social overflow. There was a time when people didn't connect high-functioning and bipolar II. Life could have been different because those people have different opportunities now. I never considered my chances as too late. I've embraced my late blooming. In fact, there was so much in music, art, gaming and technology that made my life magical just as much as challenging. I had amazing teachers that didn't fault me for my struggles,who believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. I got lucky in a sense because there were so few people in my position that would have had support like I did. There were holes in that support but someone else with a safety net that kept me from giving up.

And this was hard mode. If I'm lucky, then the instability in any other aspect could be failure for another. I can't wish my life on my worst enemy and not be a monster. Living in my body is amazing and terrifying and given a chance I would not choose my challenges and problems again. Yet I practice self love and self discipline though conditionally. I don't excuse my mistakes but I don't destroy myself over them.

Mentally sound people struggle hard too. My struggles don't mean I get to assume anyone has it easier. Not in the least. I don't understand anyone else's struggles, even if it's an OMG #metoo #twinning kind of moment. In fact,sometimes people who are supposed to be complete opposites, sometimes we can relate somehow. Those wavelengths are definitely bridges to acceptance but it will never make us really get it.

Socializing will never be easy but it's the trainwreck I can't avoid. I can be unpredictably great, mediocre or even forgettable. What makes me better at it is work. As in my last post concerning compromise in work and personal situations, the important skill to build is that you can build your tribes. You can respect people and create a compromise and trust to function better. You'll find people that want to sabotage you too. You end up focusing on or venting with the ones that lift you up. You don't get less sick. You just develop the skills to deter the symptoms.

People won't know how you make it look so easy. They'll even assume you have it effortlessly. I share my 'secret' knowing it can be scrutinized and used against me or really help someone who thinks they're failing when they're really nailing it.