Around midnight. I've had all-nighters the last two nights. As has so often been the case in the all-nighter manifestation of insomnia in me, I cannot sleep until dawn is near. As soon as the first bird sounds and the night sky starts to get that lighter blue light, I know I will mostly likely be able to sleep then.
I have started a new anti-depressant and feel more fragile than usual while it is slowly starting to do it's thing, meds changes bringing instability of brain chemistry. I will not jynx it by going on to many thoughts about that. Just have to go ahead with it and see what happens. I've felt painfully unstable mood-wise a lot over about the past six months, with some good patches.
Finding myself lately spilling my guts in public. Like tonight, suddenly letting go about my anxiety, work dysfunctionality, many breakdowns and bipolar at my friend's house to someone I know only through friends and occasionally. He's a minister of a religion but also a bit of a rascal, from my impressions. He was incredibly kind though when I finished my 'confession', my voice shaky, tears not far away.
It left me feeling so vulnerable afterwards, that I can suddenly burst my emotional banks like that with people I hardly know. My bank-burst tonight was fully audible to my friend's brother as well, cooking in the kitchen. A part of me wondered if my heart had opened to that minister in some way I found unfamiliar and scary. Open your heart, risk pain. Couldn't have hoped for a better reaction, but still feel raw.
It's a point of self-esteem in me that I try to make the most of the social joy I can find, whatever small bit of enjoyment I can find anywhere, to fly in the face of the gravitational free-falling into my own emotions, which I sometimes do anyway, usually always at home. But when I get out of the home, I give a friendly face to people if I can do it, which is fairly often. I struggle to get out of the home though, struggle to find the energy to meet that enactment, I guess, and often feel very tired after appointments etc.
Nonetheless I have become someone who now smiles easily at strangers at bus stops sometimes, while fearing them on the inside, that they could hurt me if they knew who I really am in detail. I find it easier to do with strangers because what have I got to lose, they will never get to know more about me than I seem to them. It's when people start to know more about me I can get really afraid. It takes me a long time to be really feel safe with new friends, if I ever really do.
On the other hand, my efforts at being confident and easygoing in public actually works well to maximise good feelings with and about other people, perhaps giving me a sense of belonging with them. Me who has felt an outsider pretty much all my life, and have found that chronically painful, even torturing at times.
I was an actor in my teens to early 20s and really loved being characters other than myself. It helped me get over near-complete shyness with people from a very early age, so awkward in myself, high anxiety, didn't know what to say, really painful. Falling randomly into acting woke me up to a bright spirit in me from a time when I had felt pretty fully miserable at every moment, half dead I felt especially in the years around my mid-teens leading up to that.
Perhaps it's acting the social persona I have developed over decades now - I feel it helps me and others. Those others I feel are all beautiful at some level, and who I generally feel respect and goodwill just for being fellow humans. Even after the pain at not connecting with the large body of them, and feeling too roughly treated and viewed, so often.
But I've been a shocking b*tch many times too, while still feeling pain and excrutiating sensitivity inside. My social persona feels like some kind of redemption, especially since I like acting!
Weird, hey?
Of course it's also about pride, of which I have plenty, for good or bad.
Even when I meander along with different and sometimes contradictory ideas, writing seems to pacify and clarify things for me while mostly not providing any answers in a way. I almost like this as I'm not sure there are answers for what I'm asking.
