But Still You Call That Number

"i'm alive, it kinda took me by surprise
but everytime i look away, there's no light
there's no sentry at the gate" -- Twilight Singers, "There's Been An Accident"

There's a controversial theory that posits labile personalities, where moods are affected wildly by the environment--a penny found on the floor inducing mania, a unkind word causing a catatonic depression, a car cutting you off causing rage--are in part due to an overactive sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the flight or fight instinct--it raises the energy level so that an individual can adjust and react to the environment. With an overactive sympathetic nervous system, the flight or fight instinct has a hair trigger.

I write this because I'm trying to be cold and rational about myself. If I can rationalize this, then I can deal with this recent re-emergence of old pattern. Unfortunately, identifying the problem doesn't really help me much. I'm sure a paraplegic knows which spinal discs are severed, but that doesn't help him much to stand.

Just a little spark of interest on my part, an ability I had long thought died, and I'm falling back into the same pattern. That beginning euphoria, potentials filling me hope, and then the nervousness, being too analytical, coming to conclusions, over-interpreting every small thing in hope of some meaning. I'm already thinking of every possible negative outcome (because I have been hit with almost every possible negative outcome--fuck, if you've read this blog, you've seen it all--from the simply just not interested to the intervenor who happens to catch her interest shortly after I've met her to, well, a Certain Someone). I think the random intervenor option is happening here, with a smidge of just not interested.

I wish that with this identification of this very real problem, I could just avert this behavior. I'm trying my damndest. But instead I find myself disgusted that I'm back in this pattern, and only after a couple of weeks from that unilateral little spark. Of course, this feeds into another round of negative realizations. If I'm feeling like this so quickly, obviously that doesn't make me that attractive--honestly, I'm one of the last people who should be in a relationship of any sort.

And of course, it just reinforces my belief that everything is just noise.

My friends keep telling me that I need to look at what has happened as a positive--a part of me that I thought was gone forever is back. There is hope. There is potential. That I am healing. I'm trying. I honestly am trying. But I can't help thinking that every single time I've felt this, I ended up feeling redfaced and disappointed. That everytime I see a secret smile directed my way, there's a part of me that says it's nothing, it's noise and dross. Even if there's some potential, I'll fuck it up because I complicate things.

After a Certain Someone, I wouldn't care that "Yeah, I'll give you a call" is just an empty Angeleno farewell platitude because I really had no other expectation, nor did I care. And now, well, you can probably guess.

My therapist told me the one way to avoid all this is just to become a recluse, like J.D. Salinger--with no risk comes no disappointment. Given my recent reactions (which I concede is fucked up and over the top, duh, that's why I'm making this attempt to exorcise these demons), maybe that's what I should become. Because that ability to feel the spark is back, as well as all the attendent issues.

This no longer makes me feel a righteous anger against myself. I'm just sad. Sad, and very, very tired.

"far away, where you run, when it all became undone
you'll be dust, realize, you were taken for a ride
but still you call that number, til you're crawling under
them stones, assorted jones, and all alone." --Twilight Singers, "There's Been An Accident"