Preserve, had an Indian-style pot luck this afternoon. I'd promised to attend, so I baked naan and headed up the street.
It couldn't have been a prettier day. Harriet's garden is magical. The guests were all like-minded, friendly people. The food was delicious. There was some gentle live music. I enjoyed a conversation with another woman from the neighborhood.
Yet I freaked out and had to leave after less than an hour.
It used to be bigger parties and stranger strangers. Now, it's any gathering. Pressure builds inside me. The strain of finding things to say is enormous. My desire to escape overwhelms me. I flee.
And afterwards! Oh my god, the toxicity. I'm filled with feelings of shame and stupidity, a certainty that I've behaved badly or talked too much or done wrong. The feelings continue to taint my awareness for hours afterwards. Nothing feels right, nothing is fun, everything loses its allure.
It's a trauma symptom: inappropriate activation of the sympathetic nervous system. A situation viewed with pleasant anticipation by more well-balanced people is apparently a scene of combat to my nerves: enemies in every chair, danger in every dish, hazards everywhere.
The simple solution, of course, is Never Accept Another Party Invitation As Long As I Live. And it wouldn't break my heart. But the problem closes in, year by year, and I wonder how long it will be before I can't stand to be in the same room with another human being.
Harriet, the woman who runs
It couldn't have been a prettier day. Harriet's garden is magical. The guests were all like-minded, friendly people. The food was delicious. There was some gentle live music. I enjoyed a conversation with another woman from the neighborhood.
Yet I freaked out and had to leave after less than an hour.
It used to be bigger parties and stranger strangers. Now, it's any gathering. Pressure builds inside me. The strain of finding things to say is enormous. My desire to escape overwhelms me. I flee.
And afterwards! Oh my god, the toxicity. I'm filled with feelings of shame and stupidity, a certainty that I've behaved badly or talked too much or done wrong. The feelings continue to taint my awareness for hours afterwards. Nothing feels right, nothing is fun, everything loses its allure.
It's a trauma symptom: inappropriate activation of the sympathetic nervous system. A situation viewed with pleasant anticipation by more well-balanced people is apparently a scene of combat to my nerves: enemies in every chair, danger in every dish, hazards everywhere.
The simple solution, of course, is Never Accept Another Party Invitation As Long As I Live. And it wouldn't break my heart. But the problem closes in, year by year, and I wonder how long it will be before I can't stand to be in the same room with another human being.
Comments
Say NO to simple solutions.
I can imagine your stressful, long hours would make anything like this especially bad at the moment.
All it took to get me through the evening was a couple of DVDs' worth of escapist television. This is a vast improvement over former times, when I would have acted to realize the visions of single malt and large blocks of chocolate that were dancing through my head on the way home from today's party.
So, paradoxically, while my sensitivity to stimuli increases, it seems that I'm also becoming more resilient.
The human mind, she is verreh strange, no?
I know--it stinks on ice.
Makes me wonder how the hell anyone ever throws a party. SRSLY.
My second reaction was a bit of embarrassed relief that I'm not the only one who finds parties a challenge to cope with.
I think it's brave of you to go, even for a short space.
You baked naan! You showed up! You enjoyed the garden, the conversation, the refreshments! Apart from being dissatisfied with the length of time you spent there, did you mess anything up?
I think not.
Give yourself some credit -- showing up at the party is the hardest part, in my opinion.
*continues to admire you*
No, I didn't break any social rules apart from the gracious leavetaking one. The bad feelings arise strictly from exposure to the combat zone, and have very little to do with how well or poorly I fought.
Put another way, they aren't reasonable feelings. Just nervous system reactions.
So, count your wins and let the rest go. I really think the entire trauma is around self-image and not at all the image you project to others. It is for me anyway! I recommend the Paraliminal CD I have for you to recover and for future events. I'll be returning it soon, I'm sorry I have it when you need it. "Self-esteem Supercharger", it's very effective for what you have described.
And you're right--apart from rabbiting out without a word to my host, I don't think my actual outward behavior was bad.
Why on earth do parties exist if everyone feels this way? It's very bizarre.
PS: I sent an email about our train reservations. Give it a look and let me know if it's ok.
And I got your note. Sounds great, can't wait, and THANK YOU for taking care of these details. Very much appreciated.
Weddings.
Remind me when the big event is again?
My trick that evening was to have the camera as a distraction to fiddle with. Though I discovered that drinking beer and using a dslr don't go hand in hand...
cheers
I was admiring your camera, by the way. Meant to ask if you were the gathering's official visual chronicler.
Next time you're out wandering the neighborhood, stop by and say hi.
And you're also quite right about missing them if they were entirely absent. There have been some wonderful gatherings in my life, and all of them involved friends, good, and conversation.
I think yesterday's only missing ingredient was "friends"--as distinct from "like-minded folks would could become friends. The latter category take more courage, and I don't have a lot of that to spare right now.
Thanks for the excellent insights.
Thanks for the reminder that parties can be a good thing.
Generally, games freak me out more than regular parties. Wine-tasting, now that is relaxing!