emu kid is on the lam

Argh. Somehow I have to learn how not to freak out in large groups of people. Either that or identify the critical mass at which just one extra person tips the group over into "too many." I couldn't sleep and I had this long emo rant about bottomless pits and my intimacy issues and then I realised that totally wasn't the point, I was just projecting thanks to reading too much fanfiction: the point was I got edgy when the crowd showed up, mellowed out briefly thanks to something blue in a martini glass (those things are hard to carry, it's like the angle of the glass was purposefully designed for ease of spillage) and possibly should have quit while I was ahead and gone home before I sobered up.

The really interesting thing is that my meltdowns are always postponed these days. Gone are the days of sneaking off to the bathroom in the middle of dinner to wear fingerprints in somebody else's sink and try not to cry. Now all the tension is stored up in my shoulders like a coiling spring to be let out when it's over. On the one hand this means that there is no way to KNOW whether leaving earlier would have been an improvement, but on the other hand it's probably not that healthy. I do it during family fights, as well, in fact we all have the tendency and it means an argument is never really over, because we don't settle it so much as dismiss it, only to have it rise up later as a generic resentment that has no answer.

Another paradox is that I feel like I have to get the rest of my life in order to not feel so unmoored in social situations... yet it's pretty much impossible to find a corner of my life that is NOT social. I should have just gone into science, then I would have had an excuse to be a misfit. Also then I could have built a death ray. It just doesn't feel the same to cackle "I'll show them all! I'll write baffling yet poignant poetry in small obscure magazines and own many strange hats!"