So, I had a breakdown on Saturday. On Thursday, I was on my way home from work. For whatever reason, I decided to check what time the next bus was coming, and I saw that it wasn't for another 20 minutes or something. So I decided to walk for 10 minutes to another bus stop that would save 25 minutes by catching the bus that I have to transfer to directly. While I was waiting at that stop, I saw that someone who was pulling out of their parking space in the parking lot across the street had a flat tire. So, I jogged across the street and let them know. She said she hadn’t even noticed as she had gotten into the car. It was a young woman and a young guy that I assume she worked with.
So, she pulled the car into a nearby parking spot that had space to get access to the tire and i jogged back across the street to wait for the bus. Then I saw her heading back into the building, so I yelled across the street to her, "Do you not have a jack?" and she said "I have no idea. I don't even know how to change a tire. I'm going to call AAA." So, I told her that would take like 2+ hours. I'll just change it for you.
So, I did. Took about 20 minutes including the time spent trying to find the jack in her car. She was super thankful. Wanted to give me money. I declined. But we exchanged numbers because she, at least, wanted to treat me to a meal etc. I suppose it’s ironic, but I had missed my bus and the next one ended up coming around 30 minutes after I was done(eating up the time I had tried to save and then some). I was on my way to play tennis that night and ended up being late. Fine, whatever. No good deed goes unpunished, but no big deal.
In any case, she ended up inviting me to a community table event on the coming Saturday at around 5. I went. It was pretty cool, though semi awkward going to something alone and being semi introduced to a couple of her friends. A lot of small ish talk about what we do. Which was fine, but at some point it just became sort of dissatisfying. I no longer felt like I was being productive by being there. So, I let her know that I was gonna go walk around a bit.
I walked a few blocks away the event, spent some time with my own thoughts. Thought about the reality that the people that are often of the most interest to me are the social justice conscious types, but that the motivation for a lot of them just doesn't quite make sense to me so I find it hard to connect. For example, in her case, both of her parents are lawyers. She grew up in Boston. She works for a non-profit that does good things. But somehow, I couldn't get to the core of who she was as being someone who truly cared? Not so much that she didn’t care about what she was doing, but that she wasn’t trying very hard.
I dunno, she and her friends just seemed like the quintessential privileged white kids who are doing things that are "good" but that they just sort of want to enjoy their lives? I dunno, there was just a disconnect somewhere. That none of them had truly understood how rough a lot of people have it. Nonetheless, I did enjoy my time.
I walked with them to the bus station, a few blocks away, that our buses would leave from. Her friends had talked about going out to get drinks after, and I know that they had at least confirmed that that was what they were going to do. Unconfirmed whether she was joining, but it seemed implied that she would. In any case, I didn't get an invite. They, while still being smiley and nice, didn't seem to be interested in spending more time talking to me. In any case, she and I had planned to meet up on the coming Wednesday for a bite to eat after work. She said that she'd text me later just to confirm and to finish the conversation that we were in the middle of on the way to the bus station. But, she never ended up texting me. Nothing was ever said.
After a long quiet ride home on the bus, I arrived in the silence of my empty quad. What it came down to is that I started going through my phone, through the list of people that I actually wanted to talk to about how I was feeling, but also that had actually responded to the last thing that I had said. I passed through texts, through messenger, through emails, through everything. It ended up being a list of people who I had asked/said something and not gotten a response from. Some who I had reached out to multiple times with no response. And I did send out the standard “hey” and “whatsup” to the people who weren't in that position. But it was a saturday night, people were out doing things. And in that moment of realizing that there was no one that I wanted to talk to who simultaneously wanted to talk to me was when I wasn't sure what to do with myself.
Feeling disconnected in and of itself is sort of suckish. But I think it was the feeling disconnected but also rejected that pushed me over the edge. It was on the back of having been stood up or ghosted in a string of interactions over the 3 weeks prior. It finally became too much, and I became unsure of how to move forward. I didn't want to watch a movie. I didn't want to play a game. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I didn't want to sleep. I tried writing, but there was nothing to say. Do your words make a sound if no one is listening? Sitting there with my hands resting on the keys, I hit a wall.
I hit it hard enough that I couldn’t hold the pain in. So I locked myself in a bathroom stall and cried for an hour and half before a friend found me. He tried talking through things with me for maybe half hour until i finally got up and went back to my room. I went back to attempting to write down what was in my head.
He wanted to help, but seeing his realization that I have actually thought through this pretty thoroughly, that hurt too. I understand rather deeply exactly what happens and what goes wrong. And that, frankly, there isn't a good solution. There isn't some support network that I haven't spent the time building. It's literally just comes down to crossing paths with someone who I connect with. But it’s not one person, it's going to come down to crossing paths with that set of people. And until then, this is my life. Every once in awhile my head falls beneath the surface, I gulp in water, and I feel like I’m drowning. It’s in those moments that you can’t be helped. It’s those moments that are most terrifying.
I think of myself as at least three sine functions layered on top of each other in addition to a linear function. The linear function increases with the coping strategies and skills that i have. So it effectively increases with time/age. There's a sine function that corresponds to my interest in what I’m doing. I’d peg it as some sort of work/life satisfaction metric. There's a sine function that corresponds to the level of connection that I feel I have with the people around me. Much lower amplitude(because true connection is extremely rare), but it does also sway. That connection wraps in tightly with how I feel romantically. So despite the smallness of the sway, during troughs I bounce between asexual and cripplingly lonely. At peaks, anxiety about ending up back in a trough takes over. The last sine is life stress. which isn't necessarily a sin function but for simplicity I'm assuming that it is one, but that it has a variable period. Sum them together and you get me.
One could make the point that emotions can’t be boiled down to numbers in this way. While I’d like to agree, I think they can. I think that the four functions are made up of components that are often functions themselves, but that are measurable nonetheless. I know what medications I’m taking and how much physical activity I’m getting to cope. I know whether or not I have a goal or ambition that I’m striving for. I know the difference between feeling understood, feeling heard, and feeling appreciated. And I know that when there’s a mountain of work, it feels more oppressive than a molehill of work. So, that’s my life. It's altering the variables that define those 4 functions. It’s turning knobs and pulling levers where I can, and all the while hoping that I find someone that can help. Hopefully it's more than one. But you have to start somewhere.