Forest Babies
Caring for yourself as you socially regress.
The last girl I made out with wanted to keep masks on.
This is a complete paraphrase. The client who shared with me a date saying that will hopefully forgive me for retelling it. It is just too good. Too good.
My first thought is: That is Hot.
Kinks arise as anxieties come forth. As we each wrangle to most effectively manage the torrid of changes and onslaught of stimulations, our minds go wild. So much “need” and urgency, requirements, emotion; the stakes are high across all fronts. Our brains simply cannot linearly manage all that comes at them.
Think about visiting an ancient city or famous art museum, a religious or spiritual pinnacle. If you do or have, and find yourself browsing for hours, you may well find that even in the beauty and awe, you start to spin out and disengage. Even the best aesthetics can cause overload.
My last time in Chicago was nearly (and shamefully, as it is a wonderful City) thirteen years ago. It was a fraught vacation undertaken to visit a lover, resulting in a breakup (I was dumped in the airport…hit me up offline for the good/bad story). A snowstorm that had me trapped in Chi-Town for nearly a week, and my first and finest experience of solo travel. With the cold, the woe, and the wet, I spent a lot of time indoors. Museums, cafes, theatres, and libraries were my friends and fellows in a City covered in white and blood spots from my heart. More than a few days were spent trolling the halls of the Art Institute. (For those of you not familiar, the AI is one of the greatest, largest, most impressive, vast, and fantastic art collections in the Nation. World?) Growing up in DC, the noble Smithsonians taught me how is [just as important as] where art is. So off-kilter, meditative, quiet strolling was exactly what I longed for. But there is a tipping point. One particularly blizzardy day, I arrived early to the AI and after a few hours of getting lost in comfort and appreciation, I flipped out.
In a gallery, in need of a bathroom, and utterly confused how to get out to a café for a pit stop and bite. Easy, I’ll just look at what paintings I had already seen and thus retrace my steps – Hansel and Gretel style. No luck. As my bladder continued to pinch, it became clear, I had stopped seeing the art for some time. The works all blended together in an oil blotch blob. I was lost in a room where I had blindly walked as my eyes had long ago turned off. Even the lovely can leave you lambasted and laid out.
End of story – I sat down on a bench and cried. (Not hard in the best times, all the more easy that week.) I was eventually and graciously rescued by a kind guard. Embarrassed to learn there was a sign about a bathroom just around the corner. I made it in time. Ate a salad. Went back to my hotel. Took a bath. Called my Mom. Slept too much and not enough. Rose to wrestle reality once again.
The above is a light and limp situation adjacent to where we democratically find ourselves at present. We are tapped out. Told to turn on, too often turn on and get ticked off. The pixels and pathos pound our pupils, and as creatively as we engage and “communicate” the less there is discourse.
You may find yourself:
1) Not wanting to be IRL – like ever
2) Responding with a gut level sentiment of “why bother”
3) Questioning how “wearing leggings everyday” is not a fun as once thought
4) Insecure and nervous
5) Picking at your skin, or ass (was it always this … something)
6) On Psychologytoday.com after 11 PM
7) Not wanting a “relationship” and crying to your hookup anyhow
8) Getting a job offer and not accepting it, or even responding
9) Not following up
10) Celibate and not bothered, and bothered by that…
11) Googling “is it normal..” before various phrases
Yeah, me too.
So, what do we do? How can we up hinge the hiccup?
There are things I will NOT recommend:
1) Playing Pioneer. Like, PLEASE! I vomit in my coffee each time I hear the taking on of some Colonial practice as the remedy for societal upheaval. As if folks in the dawn of the Nation were not only industrious and skillful agrarians but enlightened as well.
2) Downloading a game on your phone. Games are for children.
3) Baking. I am not against it; baking is a great thing. Baking is in a boomtime. It does not need my help.
4) Doing a puzzle. In summary: Dust catcher.
Was dating ever easy?
No, I mean, not even in a marriage or long(ish) relationship it is an odd convention. Speaking as one not so much geared to “romance” nor “intimacy”, I gotta say: I always loved it. I loved it as l love Shakespeare and Greek Theatre – pageantry and high art has long been a place for me to access emotion. Feelings being less at play in my day-to-day. I oscillate between “leave me alone” and “take my picture” and “kiss my face”.
What do we learn? That going through the motions of humanity can be a “high” as well as pedestrian. Remembering to smile, mask be damned. Upping the anti on the manner – please and thanks yous and “Hi I am Tracy Michele, what is your name?” All that jazz matters, more now as we need to maintain the health and rigor of our interactions as they are ever different and evolving.
Note: Even without a Global Public Health experience such as we are wading through, community and relationships forever and perennially transform. We are ever more aware at present as the changes arrived tremendously swiftly. Evoking extraordinary adaptation. This is not to belittle, it is just so.
In the professional sphere the muscles of social aptitude can pump via practices I frequently preach:
- Thank you notes – NO MATTER WHAT. I don’t care if the app is on a server or portal – you email the fucking info account and show your gratitude. Don’t feel thankful, then you should not apply!
- Follow up - mark your calendar, get a Trello, DO NOT KEEP YOUR CONTACTS in your head. Keep folks posted
- Say “you’re awesome” if you are a fan of a brand or drool over a company – tell them as much. Ask to be connected and learn more. Curiosity is best satisfied by front ending with a compliment
Returning to the “theatre” of extroverted endeavors, now is a time to, sure do an adult coloring book or whatever, but also to plan big and “out there”. Nightclubs being on pause, my better half and I do disco dance parties, I wear lipstick, we have slumber parties, and take on (somewhat ridiculous) domestic projects. Results can induce arguments, awesomeness, or both. What is important is not to pretend or aim for “fun”, but just say “fuck it” and try a thing. A big, silly, beautiful “try”.
At the workplace (whatever that is or could look like for you) dress up. I mean it. Don’t wear your PJs, even if they are the “good ones”. Blow dry your hair. And do your face. Wear a suit and hot panties. Put on a show and create a character, a “mask” if you will, that you put on and take off. Make the break between insular and active. And if you don’t feel it, don’t worry – I didn’t ask for a good reason! There is a good deal to be missed, aside from caloric output, when we lost our commutes. Delineation is huge. Boundaries make us better.
Keeping up social aptitude is a to-do, well worth it if you aim to reduce anxiety and find and regain an understanding of how and when “pause” is actually due. Not a “turn in” but a choice of a less social activity as just that, a choice. Not therapy, or healing, but an option is all.
