Tornado

Here's a hard learned lesson. Never ask your friends what they would like to see you blog about.

The answers are either a) smartass or b) so off the wall and unlike anything you'd ever want to write about that you wonder if they've ever actually read anything you've written.

Selah.

What saved me this week was half a day in a car and a Neko Case song I adore.

***

I have waited with a glacier's patience. 

-Neko Case

My best friend is looking forward to a date.

Like me, she's using online dating. Also like me, she has some pretty horrifying stories about online dating. When we're together we privately agree that online dating is a wasteland of human sadness. However, we're both homebodies whose immediate social circles are either primarily gay, partnered, or both. Meeting straight single guys in those circumstances is challenging.

She's telling me about the guy and how excited she is about going to meet him and I can't help it, my inbred cynicism bubbles to the surface.

"He's probably some small town asshole."

She laughs and I tell her, "No, seriously. No one who uses online dating, you excepted, is good looking, charismatic, nice, and totally sane. Period. Even I'm only three fourths of that particular equation."

She doesn't miss a beat. "I assume you're missing totally sane?"

***
Stop it! Stop it! 
Stop it! Stop it! 
Stop this madness.
I want you.
-Neko Case

Dating with an anxiety disorder is awful.

I have sort of your normal woman-in-her-late-20s fears about dating: "How does this dress look? What if we have nothing to talk about? What if he's a Fundamentalist Christian? Who should pick up the check? What if he only listens to metal?" 

Then I have the special fears that only come with living with an anxiety disorder: "What if he's actually an H. H. Holmes style serial killer?" 

Seriously. That is the thought that goes through my head every single time I meet someone new for coffee. 

This is to say nothing of the sheer terror that comes with having to (eventually, I've never actually spilled it) admit that I have OCD and that despite being in treatment, I still struggle with it every day. If I'm not actively trying to suppress one of my compulsions I'm having to snap my fingers in front of my face to stop an obsessive thought train, which can be anything from the number of calories I've had in the course of the week to the fear I am actually allergic to cabbage and am about to go into anaphylaxis.

I wish I could say that I'm being a little flippant here, but these are the things that worry me. These and a host of other things. Living inside my head feels like spinning around inside a tornado of negativity, doubt, and anxiety. I'm still trying to figure out how to stop the negative thoughts from whirling around, sucking up other negative thoughts into a death-spiral of doubt and fear. I can't handle this without professional help, why in the hell would I want to land that tornado in someone else's life? 

***

 I miss, I miss,

I miss, I miss,

I miss, I miss,

I miss, I miss,

how you'd sigh yourself to sleep. 

-Neko Case

I've been in love exactly once in my life. 

I wouldn't have called it love then. I would have said infatuation at the time. I would have said a total fucking mistake when we finally broke up and it stuck. But now, with the clarity that only comes after many glasses of bourbon, crying to Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits, and many more years, I can say that I was in love. 

We weren't right for one another. I knew it even then. I was just starting to realize that there might not be something right about the way my brain works. He was the best candidate for delayed adolescence I've ever met. But he made me laugh, which I needed. He was devastatingly good-looking. So much so that my friends commented on it. He could also keep up with me intellectually, which was a gift. He liked Brahms and bluegrass and art. He edited and encouraged my writing. When we finally did split up, it was like losing one of my best friends. I cried so hard I threw up. I gained five pounds. I didn't leave my house except to go to work for weeks. 

What I loved about him--why I can say now, definitively, that I loved him--wasn't his washboard abs or his killer sense of humor. It was because as this fragile thing that was my mental health was slowly coming undone, I allowed myself to crash into him with the full emotional force of everything that was happening. And he understood. At least, he seemed to. He didn't turn away or try to deflect it. Instead he made me feel like, despite everything that was happening, something in me made me the kind of woman who could be loved by a man like him. 

In the end, he wasn't the Adonis I originally made him out to be. He was, however, a storm shelter for a brief time. 

***

This tornado loves you.

-Neko Case

In the end, my best friend's date didn't turn out. I saw her shortly afterward and she shrugged it off. He was good looking, and may have ended up being charismatic, nice, and totally sane. They just didn't click with one another. I admire both her stamina and her optimism. I find trying to keep those things up on my own end exhausting. 

But then again, the alternative is equally exhausting. Being alone and a mess is no easier than being with someone and a mess. 

In the end I think that's what keeps me dating even despite fears of metalheads and serial killers. It's the hope that there's someone who's not just a storm shelter, but an anti-tornado. And he may not have washboard abs or be charismatic, and he's probably not totally sane, but who is? My only real hope is that if he is a little bit crazy, he's also the kind of guy where when we do collide we can both finally stop spinning.