The Bloody Doors Off

What the fuck am I even doing here?

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Graphic designer, playwright, occasional asshole

Auntie Social

My nephew’s fiancee is pregnant and on Friday we’ll find out (hopefully) if it’s a boy or a girl (I say it’s a girl, she believes it’s a boy). So either way, come September I’ll be an uncle or an aunt. (Bah DUM dum. I’m here all week; tip your server.)

Enough with the funny.

I’ve been feeling anti-social lately, and it’s been getting worse. I want to isolate myself from everyone and everything when I don’t need to interact (i.e., work). Not that I’ve been a social butterfly my whole life, lord knows I can be shy in some situations (shut up). But this is getting bad. There are times I’m screaming in my head to be left alone; others I have to force myself to get out and be social. I want to build the bonds with my family and am doing my best. But there are days it’s a huge fuckin’ struggle. Wayne and Donna hosted a simple dinner tonight with me and Kevin and my mom and step-father (they got back from Florida on Wednesday). It was good, but in the middle of it? Anxiety attack. Just brutal. I had to take a lorazepam and it wouldn’t dissolve under my tongue, it was so dry. I shouldn’t have anxiety hanging out with family.

Now I’m home and the roommate is out and it’s quiet and it’s totally needed. But it won’t last. And tomorrow I’ll be in a busy office and riding transit with hundreds of other people and working in one of the busiest parts of the city, and dammit I’m gonna want people to give me space at some point. I need to change my head space.

I just don’t know how.

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3 responses to “Auntie Social”

  1. barblewarne Avatar
    barblewarne

    I think you’e be a ‘great-uncle’ no matter what sex the baby is! [I wish these things would all me to put in comments at various paragraphs] While it would be nice not to have anxiety hanging out with family, I sometimes find that is where you feel it most – go figure! Maybe because you care more about how they think of you, even though you know they’ll love you anyway.

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  2. Harold Avatar
    Harold

    For better or worse, your relatives can easily see the other stuff on your Johari Windows, and again fbofw they will usually share these insights with you. All they really want to see is that you are being honest with yourself and that you are seeking to be and become your best self … So that YOU will eventually give yourself more permission to acknowledge and celebrate your greatness. Besides, as a cat liver you will recall that “Courage dies not always roar. sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of a long day that says ‘I have done my best and I will try again tomorrow’” Apologies for paraphrasing Rademacher and likely Hugo too. … And congratulations on the pending Keurig acquisition. Be well.

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  3. Harold Avatar
    Harold

    Oops. “Lover” not liver … And for a musical reference, consider “The Darkest One ” by The Hip or “call me home” by The Cat Empire.

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