My Demons Again...

"I'll give you some advice that cannot be fought
Now I'm gonna warn you: Don't you get caught...
Don't get caught in my brainstorm..."
                                                - The Fleshtones

I'm picking fights with everyone lately.

Not sure how I got into this frame of mind, and I seem powerless to stop it.  I've been here before, though.  Many years back, before I was diagnosed with my demons, I went through a phase that led me directly into what I refer to as my "Hermit Phase."  Before I even knew what Social Anxiety or OCD were, I realized one day I had changed from a very sociable, friendly person into someone who grew easily irritated when others seemed oblivious, whether consciously or unconsciously so, to things that seemed so simple and obvious to me.  Further, whatever filter most people have that allows them to shield others from that irritation didn't seem to be functional in me.  Coupled with my natural tendency towards sarcasm, I quickly found myself driving people away, pissing off friends, and destroying relationships.  Yet, I felt incapable of stopping myself from doing it.

Once I began working with my therapist and began to learn about the processes that were likely happening in my brain, I also began to learn coping skills.  The process went like this: My OCD Demon would see something not "right" in what someone else was saying or doing, and immediately fire off the alarm that it had to be fixed; my Social Anxiety Demon would begin whispering in my ear that whatever that other person was saying or doing was being said or done in order to make me look bad, or to attack me in some way, and would insist that I go into full defense mode - fight or flight, so to speak, except I couldn't flee because OCD compelled me to stay and fix it, so that left "fight" as my only option.  I upset a lot of people over a lot of little things.

A combination of learning some coping skills (especially recognizing the warning signs that such a process was beginning and getting myself out of the situation before it reached the point I couldn't "flee") and finding the right medication (better living through Zoloft!) helped immensely.  I also believe that, in many ways, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, helped me to improve to a point where I could begin being social in the real world again, because the built-in buffer created by being able to simply turn off the computer let me begin to push and stretch my boundaries.

As I've shared here before, my fight against my demons is never, and will never be, finished.  I must always remain vigilant against their schemes.  I haven't written much about them in recent months because they've been relatively quiet - or so I thought. The holidays came and went with no flare-ups, and I was feeling pretty good about where my head was.

Those demons are insidious, and infuriatingly patient.  They sit and wait until the slightest crack in my armor appears, and then they make their moves.  They will slowly but inexorably chip away until the crack becomes larger and larger and finally, before I even realize it, they've gotten into my brain again. This time, rather than sending me on my usual depression spirals or battles of self-doubt, they pulled an old trick out of their armory: They brought back that process.

At first, I didn't even notice it.  Most of my friends know I love to debate.  I love a well-structured argument; I actually enjoy having my beliefs challenged in ways that forces me to assess (and, if necessary re-assess) them.  And if I can find someone to debate with who is both skilled in the art of the debate and also realizes the pure joy found in a well-placed pun or sudden non sequitur in the midst of an otherwise straight, logical argument, I am beyond happy!  Because it is the structure of the debate itself and not necessarily the content that I enjoy, I will occasionally take a devil's advocate stance even if it's not really my belief just for the fun of the contest.  It's not a malicious thing at all; I don't debate to make personal attacks, nor will I remain in a debate with an opponent who is so unskilled as to devolve from arguing his point to attacking me.  That's not fun.

But slowly, over the past month or so, I've noticed the tone of my debates growing darker.  I've found myself almost incapable of passing up opportunities to jump into the fray with anyone, and I've heard the sarcasm in my own words grow.  I'm no longer asking others to defend their beliefs because I am interested in how they think; I am now insisting that they defend stances that I see as, for lack of a better word, stupid.  My demons have taken one of the mental and logical exercises I enjoy most and once again turned it into a weapon against me.

I know it's happening because, over time, the old familiar symptoms are resurfacing:  I find myself getting actually angry at what I perceive as personal attacks that probably aren't; I find myself thinking of the other person as at best ill-informed and at worst stupid for not seeing things that seem so obvious to me; I find my inner frustration level rise to the point where adrenalin starts coursing through me and I feel as if I am physically fighting to get out of my own head.  More to the point, I find myself pissing people off or getting pissed off at people and pushing them away over the slightest perceived infraction.

What becomes even more frustrating is, now that the rational observer in my head is aware that this is happening but not yet able to do anything about it, I have begun internally dissecting each and every conversation, whether argument or not, to try to determine which are the battles that are worth fighting - the situations where I really do need to stand up and fight for something valid - and which are the inconsequential skirmishes that my demons are trying dust up into life-and-death battles.  It's not easy to define which is which; right now they look identical from inside my head.

But I'm not giving in.  I can't and won't.  I've noted before that the hell of this all is that sometimes the demons win.  But I know they won't win all the time, and I know I can get back to a place where I win more often than they do.  Writing these posts helps - a lot.  I just hope that this time around I don't have to count as many causalities among my friends and relationships as I have before.

Today's Anxiety Attack: A Stalemate With The Demons

In previous posts I have talked about the demons I must always fight, OCD and Social Anxiety, and how insidiously spiteful they are.  Forever they watch for the slightest little chink in my armor, or that one part of a moment when I let my guard down every so slightly, and they immediately seize upon the most miniscule opportunities to immobilize and imprison me, to make the world with which I can interact just that much smaller, or to at the very least snatch away a little bit of joy.  Sometimes I win; sometimes the demons win.  Today, a rare third option materialized: we split the difference.

At the end of May, The Go-Go's are kicking off a reunion/farewell tour.  Yeah, that's right, The Go-Go's: Belinda, Charlotte, Jane, Kathy and Gina.  "We Got The Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed" and "Vacation."  I was always a huge Go-Go's fan, but I never did get to see them live.  As luck would have it, they are starting the tour in Hershey, PA, just over half an hour from where I am sitting at the moment!  Well, I'm not missing my last chance to say I saw The Go-Go's live when they're practically going to be in my backyard!

Through a series of emails, I invited a friend to come to the show with me, and she and I began making plans.  As I started researching ticket prices, I mentioned that The Go-Go's website was reporting that some of the shows on the tour would also feature The B-52's, but sadly Hershey was not one of those shows.  She came back with a list of the cities where The B-52's were definitely announced.   I joked that the closest was Boston, MA, and "golly, it's only a six and a half-hour drive!"

Little did I suspect she'd actually reply with an offer to go to the Boston show.  Her proposition was that if I would finally agree to get my learner's permit and start learning to drive, she would consider the Boston road trip.  I wouldn't even have to drive on the road trip itself!  She has long been after me to learn to drive, so I took this as a little needling, and said I would get the Hershey tickets tomorrow when they go on sale.
In the meantime, however, she had talked with some other friends who were potentially into the idea of a road trip to Boston, so she wanted me to hold off buying the Hershey tickets until the road trip idea was either confirmed or sacked.  The tickets aren't cheap, and doing both shows would be out of the question.

And then it hit.

The first blow came from the OCD demon.  He usually is the one to strike first.  I could immediately feel my brow knitting in consternation, and my frustration level rising.  No! No! No! This is not what I had planned.  I had planned to go to the Hershey show.  I had invited my friend to the Hershey show.   My OCD, mild as it may be in the grand scheme of things, becomes the screaming child in the restaurant who the parents can't quiet down when plans are suddenly changed on me.  Spontaneity is not a luxury I am overly familiar with.  I need to know what the plan is, and I need to stick to the plan.  I usually do have a "Plan B" and "Plan C," but in this case those alternates were other people I might invite if this friend couldn't make it.  I was utterly unprepared for the idea of changing which show to go to.  That was already decided.  My guard was down, just for that moment, and OCD seized on it: "That's the wrong show.  You're supposed to be going to the Hershey show.  Now everything is ruined.  You don't get to enjoy this!"

Then, the Social Anxiety demon joined the attack.  One of the things this demon has taken from me over the years is the ability to travel freely, especially to places I've never been.  The last real travel excursion I took was a trip to upstate New York to visit another friend who had moved there.  That was in 1996.  Since then, even when I take vacation time from work, I don't go anywhere.  Now, there are some trips that I have made regularly enough over the years that have become immune to this demon's salvos: Spending a few days in Johnstown, PA, where my employer's production division is, for example, or traveling to New Jersey or Baltimore to see a band in the usual haunts.  In each of those cases, though, returning home in the same day is not only possible, it has been done.  Boston and back in the same day is not possible, and anytime I find myself more than a cabride's distance away from home for any length of time, the panic starts to overcome me.

"You can't be away from home that long! What if something happens? What if there is a fire? What if someone breaks into your home while you're gone?  What if you get stranded wherever you're going? What if you get hopelessly lost?"  It's a great example of the thought spirals I've described before wherein there is the rational side of me that is watching this all take place, recognizes what's happening, realizes the insanity and illogic, but is utterly unable to stop it, while the irrational side of me believes and amplifies every thought that goes through my head.  "Plus, you'd be traveling with a bunch of people, some of whom you don't even know!  They're not going to like you; they're going to laugh at you; you're going to be the butt of all the jokes!  You don't get to enjoy this!"

Understand, this all hits me in a split-second's time.  These attacks are not storms that gradually roll in like my bouts of depression; these are sudden explosions that appear seemingly out of the blue.  There is no time to prepare.  I can only respond.  And so I sat there, staring at the email on my screen, feeling that god-awful feeling of my stomach lurching into my throat, feeling the unpleasant tingle of adrenalin rushing through every avenue it can find within my body, feeling my heart pound like it will surely burst from my chest, feeling my breaths grow quicker and more shallow.  And I sat there hating that I was I going through it yet again, over something so innocuous as a possible road trip to Boston with a friend to see a band that I've always wanted to see.  How can my brain be so broken?

The next response I usually have, after the anger at myself, is the embarrassment.  In this case, it came in the form of, "OK, how do I get out of the Boston idea without letting her know that I have fallen to pieces over the past five minutes like a fool?"  This is where the excuses start formulating.  A quick check of the calendar showed me that the Boston show is on a Thursday night- AHA! There's my out!  I dashed off another email to her, this one saying that a weeknight is not good for me for travel because of work.  Of course, she reminded me that I have vacation time I can use.  DAMN!  So, I came clean, and admitted to the anxiety attack I was having.

I forget sometimes that I have a wonderful network of very supportive friends, especially those who have known me for many years and who have seen me at my worst as well as at my best.  After 14 years, this friend has seen me at the farthest ends of either side of that spectrum, and yet remains my friend (though that has no doubt been very trying at times!).  So when I told her of the anxiety, and that I would really be more comfortable with the Hershey show, she simply replied, "No problem. Hershey it is."  And when I then apologized for being so damned goofy about things, her words back to me were, "Never apologize for being yourself.  You're great."   There was no judgment, there was no unsolicited advice on how to handle anxieties, there was no "Oh there, there you poor thing;" there was just a friend being a friend.  It was the perfect tonic.

So this time, instead of the usual all-or-nothing battle I wage with my demons, we can call it something of a draw. Yes, the demons won a little bit - they took the experience of a road trip to Boston away from me.  But I won a little bit, too.  I'm still going to see The Go-Go's, just as I had originally planned, so they didn't take that away, and I was reminded by a good friend that, for as much as these demons try to convince me differently, I'm really pretty OK.


__________________________

Related posts:

Table For One
Fighting The Demons Again

Fighting the Demons Again

"I sit up all night and think of evil things to do
And I've got something very special planned for you..."
-Stiv Bators, "Evil Boy" 

I'm about to take you to a very dark place.  I'm going to attempt to describe to you a facet of my personality that I don't care for very much; a version of me that I don't like showing to the world, but which, in certain given circumstances, flashes to the surface like a buoy being forcibly held under water and suddenly released. It's the part of me that drives people away, that sometimes scares people.  That sometimes scares me.

Nothing Is True

Monday night, I was thisclose to bringing this blog to an end, cutting my Twitter and Facebook ties, and retreating back into the hermit-like state I have fought for these past several years to escape from.  My obsessive, anxious demons sat on my shoulder all night like egging me on, double-dog-daring me to do it. "You don't owe anyone anything," the wheedling voice in my head told me, "and besides, none of them give a damn about you anyway..."

In a matter of moments that night, I went from the elation of watching my beloved Phillies clinch their fourth consecutive National League Eastern Division Championship to the depths of an OCD-fueled depression, over a broken link.  There are a number of outlets through which I advertise each new blog post, and whether it be Twitter or Facebook or wherever, I dutifully link to the newest post.  Mondays, of course, are NW4NW days, and I am grateful that so many folks have told me how they enjoy those posts and look forward to them. So yesterday, after publishing this week's installment, I posted links in all the usual places.

My workdays have been extra busy recently, so I did not have the opportunity throughout the day to check my stats to see how much traffic was coming in.  I usually repost the links in the afternoon to catch the crowd who isn't around to see them in the early morning, and this I did yesterday as well.  Then I settled in to watch the game, having not checked blog stats at all.  After the game, I checked the posted link, and saw that it reported 0 clicks.  "Hmm, that can't be right..." I thought, so I clicked the link myself - and was promptly met with a "Page Cannot Be Found" error. The link that I had been advertising all day was a bad link!

Embarrassed, I corrected the link and prepared an apology post, and that's when it struck me: No one had informed me the link was bad.  Even on the Fanpage and the blog's Twitter site, there was nothing.  Had no one even bothered to try to read my post? I pulled up my stats for the day, and there, mockingly, sat a great big zero. I did the math: 100 people follow the TWIWGTS Twitter site. 1400 follow my personal Twitter account. There are 200 on the Fanpage, and 500 on my personal Facebook page. Over 100 follow through Networked Blogs.  I've never claimed a humongous readership, but out of all those people, not one bothered to try to read my newly advertised blog post? What the fuck?

Here It Goes Again

Now, most normal, well-adjusted people would consider this what it was: an anomaly.  I can look back now, with some hindsight, and say to myself, "Well duh! If the link was broken and someone tried to click it, it wouldn't show up in your stats because they never even got to the site!"  And, I know from previous feedback that many of you who read regularly do access the site mainly through those links I put out there. 

(Psst - this would be a great time for me to recommend subscribing using the email form at the upper left of this page so that you never miss a post and never have to worry about bad links. Go, do it now, I'll wait...OK, great, let's continue.)

Sure, that all makes perfect sense now, but I've talked here before about my OCD and my constant anxious paranoia that everyone is secretly trying to set me up for embarrassment, and how cunning those beasts are as foes.  They grab onto any tiny shred of anything that could be twisted to validate their existence in my brain and go immediately to work.  This wasn't a simple, explainable anomaly that was really my fault to begin with for posting an incorrect link. No sir, this was an affront on me personally! An obvious attack, and clear evidence that those lying liars never read my blog! They don't think I'm a good writer! They don't care about the things I write about!

Then, the obsessive part builds upon that:  "Not even your friends who say they read your blog actually read it. They're lying to you! And if they lie about that, then they must be lying about everything! They're not really your friends! This is important to you and to them it's all a big joke!"  I found myself considering shutting the blog down completely. After all, why should I write if no one wants to read it?  And if these people aren't really my friends, why do I interact with them? I ought to just cut all ties - then they can't lie to me anymore.  Do you see how the insane spiral builds?  My mind starts making larger and larger leaps in logic until the thoughts become irrational, and inside I journey from offended to saddened to - if the spiral is left to continue unabated - anger.

And, if anyone happens to be around me or interact with me while this process is happening, they are met with that part of my personality I mentioned earlier - the part of me that I hate. As fate would have it, one person did interact with me right then, through Twitter.  Luckily, my obsessive thought-spiral hadn't spun out of control yet, and after a few somewhat coarse, chopped exchanges, I apologized for being "in a mood" and logged off.  Had she shown up a few minutes later, however, she would likely have encountered Evil Bryan.

My Evil Twin

Evil Bryan is a very dark version of myself, a personification of those OCD/anxiety demons. When I'm in that state, I revert to the behavior of cornered animal being attacked because inside that is how I feel.  In that state I have no concern whatsoever for other people's feelings, whoever they may be - I will simply lash out at them, trying - wanting - to make them feel as bad and hurt as I feel inside at that moment.  Most of the time, that attack or lashing out takes the form of words - loud, vile, cutting words.  On rare occasions, the lashing out has been physical, documented as early as the second grade version of me who threw chairs around a classroom in a rage against a teacher.  To say it is not a pretty sight is putting it mildly.

It is not pleasant to feel that out of control, and there has never been a time when, after the storm has passed, I haven't felt immensely remorseful and apologetic. Over the years, I have learned to recognize when that side of me is surfacing, and have learned to remove myself from other people. It has the same effect as starving a fire of oxygen: the flame tries to continue, but quickly sputters out.  If Evil Bryan is starved of people to lash out at, he sputters away to nothing relatively quickly.

And so it was Monday night. I logged off of Twitter and Facebook and went to bed, and Evil Bryan never showed up. I got up the next morning thinking the storm had passed and all was well, and went about my work day.  Pretty soon I noticed a shadow looming over me.  It was a shadow I hadn't seen in a long time.

I Just Can't Be Happy Today

As it turns out, what I thought was the end of the storm was really just the eye of the hurricane. Something more was coming, I could feel it - I know the feeling all to well, as anyone who has dealt with depression on any level does: it's not sadness, it's not anger, it's not anything that can be easily described.  It's sort of a feeling that something is very wrong, coupled with a complete lack of ability to put a finger on what that wrong thing is, multiplied by the frustration of knowing that you are powerless to fix it because you can't even define it.  It's an awful, awful feeling, and I usually respond to it by pushing everyone away and closing myself up in my own private cave - and so it has been this week.

I was excited because a group of us had planned to get together to create a local writers' group on Wednesday.  I've been trying to get past some rough writers' block recently, and I'm lucky to be in a city populated with excellent writers. Some interaction with them my have been just the thing to get the words flowing again. 

I didn't go.  I hid behind my standard "I don't drive so I can't get there" excuse - even though rides were available had I asked.  Truth was, I didn't want to be around anyone. I'm catching myself hermiting; I'm watching myself push people away; I'm feeling myself fight to fend off the demons. 

Every Day I Write The Book

I actually started writing this on Tuesday - and have been rewriting, editing, and adding to it all week.  If these demons have any redeeming value, it is that they have helped to break the dam holding back the words. Now the question begs - are the words making any sense? I don't know. I know it helps.  I have gone back and forth in my mind all week whether to even post this piece. Finally, I have decided that I should; I must.  I'm not crying out for help here; I'm not looking for anyone to give me the answers (not that anyone could - this is a thoroughly inner battle).  But when I posted the last introspective piece, there were some folks who emailed me or spoke to me and thanked me for writing it and sharing it, because they fully understood it and were somewhat relieved to know that at least one other person out there experienced what they did - they weren't alone and they weren't "crazy."  I, too, find solace in that idea that somewhere out there, at least one or two of you are reading this rambling jumble of words and thoughts and feelings and saying to yourself, "I know that. I've been there."  Even if I never hear from you, I know you're there, and I'm not alone.

So I suppose this post is, in addition to being a bit of "physician heal thyself," my way of saying to those of you who I have been pushing away, I'm sorry. And also saying to those of you who understand, thank you for being there.  As for the rest of you, I beg your indulgence when I need to post such things as this - don't worry, we'll be back to our regular programming in no time.

Table For One

"They're calling all the shots
They'll call and say they phoned
They'll call us lonely when we're really just alone..."
- "Oblivious" by Aztec Camera

Twitter exchange recently between @blurdmuliebrity and myself:

@blurdmuliebrity: Seeing people eating alone in a restaurant makes my heart hurt.

@berutt: Why? I do it all the time.

@blurdmuliebrity: You can always tell the lonely ones from the nonlonely ones and it's sad.

That got me thinking: which category do I fall into? I don't think of myself as "lonely," but am I? I don't feel lonely, at least no more so than I imagine everyone does at some point or another, but then again...

"Marriage is a Wonderful Institution,
but Who Wants to Live in an Institution?" - Groucho Marx

Being a 43-year-old, reasonably healthy, heterosexual male who has never been married puts me in a minority, sociologically speaking. Of course, good-intentioned people who believe that no one else could possibly be happy or content with their lives unless they are lived by a certain prescribed set of standards are always quick to ask, "Well, what's wrong with ya?"

The answer: "Nothing."

"Uh-huh," they nod, looking perplexed as they give me the once-over in search of glaring flaws.

It's just that I have no pressing drive to get married just for the sake of being married. Not that I haven't had the opportunities. In fact, there have been points in my life where I thought I found her, but history has shown that had I taken that plunge then, I would likely be just another divorce statistic now. That's not what I want. When and if the right woman comes along, yes, I'd like to marry. To this point in my life, I haven't found her.

Drive, She Said

That I have not yet settled down in some ways parallels another societal anomaly about me: I have never learned to drive. Again, the questions have become routine: "You got some kinda disability? You get into legal trouble that says you can't drive? Wait, you mean you've never had a license?"

Nope, nope, yep.

You think they looked perplexed about the still being single thing? This one really blows people's minds! I have a harder time rationalizing this one, though. Literally, the only thing that keeps from having a driver's license is that in 43 years, I've never gone through the process.

I walk a lot, I arrange for rides with friends or family, I use public transportation. I don't "miss" driving because I've never driven. I save a lot of money that would otherwise go to auto insurance, gas, repairs, upkeep. I've gone this far without driving, what would I need with it now?

It Came in the Mail

Sitting on the far corner of my desk is the invitation to my 25th high school reunion, which will happen this summer. A quarter century. Seems like forever ago, but it also seems like yesterday.

I have not gone to any of the previous reunions, and my rationale has always been the same: "Those who were my friends are still my friends; those who were marginal I could find if I needed to; the rest I didn't like back then and they didn't like me, so why would I want to see them?"

This reunion is a bit different. This reunion is occurring in a post-Facebook world.

When I joined Facebook over a year ago, I was stunned to find the first people reaching out to me were high school classmates - literally, people who I had probably not thought of very much at all since grabbing my diploma and heading off to college. Even more stunning, they were folks who, if they remembered me at all, I would not think would have remembered me fondly.

Almost two-thirds of our graduating class is on Facebook now, and I have connected with many of them. What has amazed me is that some of my classmates who, back then, would scarcely acknowledge I existed, are now among the people I most look forward to interacting with online. I've had to reassess my own judgments and perhaps let go of a grudge or two, and as a result I've found that more than a few of those who I would have put in the "why would I want to see them?" category before have turned into really neat folks.

Of course, not all of them have. It seems every high school class has those who are still living their lives as though we were all still back in school. They never left their cliques, they never expanded their world, they never opened their minds. Their lives apparently peaked when they were 18, and that's the world they want to hold onto. They were snobs, bullies, jerks then, and they remain unchanged.

So, when the question has invariably come up, "You going to the reunion?," I find myself unable to rely on my pat answer. Now there are a group of folks who I would like to see again - those who I have reconnected with online and found common ground today that didn't exist back then. But is my wish to see these folks in person stronger than my distaste for seeing those who judged and tormented me 25 years ago, and are likely to judge and torment me now?

The Demons Inside

Over the years, I have done that same cost-benefit analysis in my mind many times. It certainly is not the reunion which is bringing that out of me. No, this is a battle that wages constantly inside those of us who deal with social anxieties.

Social anxiety can range from mildly annoying to fully debilitating, and while mine fortunately falls toward the less severe end of the spectrum, it's still a formidable demon to fight. People who have never dealt with anyone who battles social anxiety, and who don't deal with it themselves, have no concept of what it does to a person. It is not simple shyness or introversion. It is a real fear, a gripping fear, that stops you from being in even those social situations that you want to take part in.

Some friends invite me out for dinner and drinks, or a group is getting together to go to a concert or to a ballgame. Maybe some friends are having a party and would like me to be there. Whatever the situation, I go through the same process: I happily say yes, I'd love to join in. Then, little by little, the fear starts creeping in. What if I do or say something embarrassing? What if they all laugh at me? What if there are people there I don't know, and they think poorly of me? What if this is all a set up to trap me into some sort of public humiliation? The anxious thoughts spiral out of control like that, each leading to the next more irrational, more frightening thought.

This is where my friend OCD kicks in. I was diagnosed with mild OCD several years back. Again, I'm fortunate that it falls to least severe end of the possible spectrum, but it's there nonetheless. In my case, OCD manifests more in obsession than in compulsion: the racing thoughts with no basis in reality - thoughts that do not bear even the most casual scrutiny, but thoughts that I can't always stop. OCD and social anxiety often go hand-in-hand, with one feeding the other. The physiological response is an adrenaline rush, and that "oh my God" feeling in the pit of the stomach. As I said, it's a very real, gripping fear.

And so, I begin to desperately look for a way to bow out of the invitation. I find myself hoping something comes up - bad weather, illness, whatever - that is just cause for either the event to be canceled or for me to easily say "sorry, can't make it." What is strange about this process is that while I am going through it, it's as if the rational, clear-thinking part of me is watching it happen, fully aware that it is irrational, fully aware that it is an anxiety/OCD response, and yet unable to shut it off.

Sometimes the rational side wins. I literally force myself out the door to whatever the event is. And you know what? Invariably, once I'm there, I find myself having a great time. And why not? I'm with friends taking part in enjoyable activities! If there are new people there, I tend to make new friends. I'm a surprisingly charming person. If they don't like me, that's OK too - their loss. Invariably, when it's over, I can't believe that I ever had an ounce of anxiety going in.

When the anxiety wins, I spend days kicking myself. Why the hell didn't I go? Why did I let that irrational fear paralyze me? Why do I stop myself from being around people?

It Wasn't Always Thus

Those who have known me for a long time know that I did not always suffer these anxieties. Through high school, college, and throughout my twenties, I was an extremely social person. The tiny fourth floor apartment I lived in with a woman I at one point thought I was going to marry was a gathering place, and when the party wasn't there you could bet that I'd be wherever the party was.

I can't tell you exactly how or when it all changed. That's the thing about anxieties - they creep up on you; they build slowly over time. I know that it did change, however, because at some point in my mid-thirties I looked around and said, "Where is everyone?" I had slowly turned myself into a hermit, steadily letting friendships atrophy. (You know, if you turn down or cancel enough invitations, people tend to stop inviting you to hang out with them.) Dating came to a near standstill: it's hard to take a woman out when you yourself are not comfortable going out among people in the first place.

I had become one of those folks who, if I did go out, would be eating dinner alone.

The demon that is anxiety and OCD is a cunning foe, constantly whispering in your ear, forever rationalizing it's existence. It's a siren song that requires constant vigilance to resist. Have you noticed a pattern in the items I've discussed in this piece? My still being a bachelor at age 43? My having never learned to drive? My having never attended one of my high school reunions?

In each case, I have at my disposal a seemingly perfectly plausible rationalization; a ready answer for all the questions that are regularly thrown at me. And, in each case, those "rationalizations" fold under the most casual scrutiny.

The Therapist Behind the Bar

Because the most casual scrutiny reveals the flimsiness of my rationales, I tend not to scrutinize them. When @blurdmuliebrity made her comment, especially about being able to tell the lonely from the nonlonely among those who dine alone, I immediately wondered if she would be able to tell which category I fell into. Then the thought: Do I know which category I fall into?

Naturally, anyone would rather be among those who are alone, which suggests a choice in the matter, than among those who are lonely, which suggests a far worse lot in life. Surely, I'm among the alone, right? I suddenly found in my mind that those rationales were not only subject to casual scrutiny, but that I had put them under a microscope. Flimsy? Hell they're weak as water.

Of course I want a wife! Of course I want someone to share my dinner (and my thoughts and my world) with! You know what stops me from going out and finding her? That damn irrational fear. That fear of being judged, of being set up, of being mocked and embarrassed. Of not being good enough.

Of course I should learn to drive! That in itself would open so many more restaurants to go to where I could share my meal with someone. You know what stops me from doing it? That damn irrational fear. That fear of failing and in turn being judged, mocked and embarrassed. Of not being good enough.

Of course I want to go to my 25th high school reunion! There are people I really want to see again, and to hell with those with whom I will never get along. You know what stops me from going? That damn irrational fear. That fear of being judged, of being set up, of being mocked and embarrassed. Of not being good enough.

I don't think I mentioned yet that @blurdmuliebrity happens to be a bartender, and in that role I have no doubt she's seen her share of the alone - and the lonely - patronizing the establishment where she works. Good bartenders have a sense of their clientele. Good bartenders also happen to be fairly insightful amateur therapists.

A woman I knew several years back and was very fond of was an artist. She made a piece for me that I treasure greatly. It's a simple chunk of rock into which is inscribed the following:

"Man, like every other animal, tends to be passive. Unless goaded by circumstance, scarcely does he take the trouble to reflect upon his condition."

That Twitter exchange from the other night has goaded me into some self-reflection, the way a good therapist would. The writer in me demands that I express that self-reflection in words, and the blogger in me says "Share it!"

So there it is. Now, I have two choices: change, or continue. I don't know yet which path I'm going to take. Change at 43 is tough, but certainly not impossible. Either path I follow, I will continue to fight the demons of anxiety and OCD, so neither will be a cakewalk. Decisions, decisions. I need my strength - maybe a good meal.

Table for one, please.