I Love Music, Hide My Social Anxiety, And Am Possessed By Satan. Hooray Spring Break!

Alright, so I'm stressed out (the fun part is I'm stressed out more so by absolutely nothing than by homework) and I doubt I'll make it to the end of the week without another written blog post. As it happens, our Robotics final exam is an in-class project, and our teacher is too lazy to show up on due dates (hooray for weekly progress reports), and I feel the urge to write, with a musical background, as usual. I do recommend listening to it while you read this, as it gives you a better feel for my current state.

Music is something that everyone loves, because it's so goddamn relatable. Even if you hate reality and you hate existence, you turn on sad music. It doesn't matter how you feel, your emotional state dictates what genre you're currently into. I've gotten into Shinedown for the past several weeks, and for some reason their music calms me, gives me something to feel apart from what I'm feeling. I'm lost in the stories in the songs, and have reinforced my belief that yes, I enjoy rock music. Sadly, we can't have a button that restores our hearing afterwards (or earbuds that have a higher volume limit), because I would totally buy those. I would also enjoy the idea of wireless earbuds, which I'll probably make sometime in the future. Either way, if I'm stressed and have a moment to myself, I won't be able to hear anything for about 30 seconds afterwards.

And so I come back to my usual topic: stress. The reason the music isn't anything along the lines of "I'm hurt" or "just breathe" is because of spring break, on account of which I've latched onto a song that says, "hey, you're gonna win, you can fucking do this" just to get through this week. Saturday will be a day for a rundown on the basic homework assignments for next Monday, and Sunday, of course, will be a daylong Guns Of Icarus Online regatta. The rest of the week will be me getting on top of the rest of all the bullshit I have to deal with, which I'll be motivated to accomplish by another Guns Of Icarus day or two. The more I accomplish, the more I'll be able to play.

The Galleon will demolish all of them, hands down.

This week has been stressful, of course. My monologue in theatre, for one, I've forgone for two weeks, and the resulting anticipation of it gave me a panic attack the Thursday night before last. This not only didn't help my confidence, but it also kept me up all night, which in turn made me skip school on account of zero sleep (if I was gonna passively suffer, I was gonna passively suffer at home). You can guess how much this helped. The following week UIL had occupied my teacher's time, making it even worse when I had to perform it on Tuesday. My mom says I don't have social anxiety, rather that I'm just shy. I agreed with her at the time, but in recent experience, a panic attack the night before compliments the former possibility.

My mother said I was shy because I usually sat at the front of the class, usually was participative in activities, and had plenty of friends, but that doesn't matter. Just because someone's socially outgoing (or so they seem), it doesn't mean that they're socially secure. Social anxiety doesn't have to define you to affect you (oh hey, one of those sentences I end up being really proud of). If someone's infected by the flu, they're automatically assumed to be sick, that is if there was someone with a portable medical scanner monitoring a flu virus that just entered their system. It'd be foolish to automatically erect a quarantine and deem them sick (if it was Ebola, maybe). Just because a person's infected with the flu doesn't mean that the virus has taken hold. This is a somewhat fragile and negative metaphor, but it says something. We automatically assume, because someone's not displaying symptoms of social anxiety, that they're not, and yet we're told that a virus can flourish and at the same time display no symptoms within a person.

If a person says they feel social anxiety and at the same time not display any symptoms, it only means they're good at hiding it. I can be stabbed (emotionally) in the heart, and still maintain a smile on my face. Whenever someone asks me how I'm doing, one thing I make a point to do is avoid the answer, "oh, I'm fine, how are you?". The answer of "I'm fine" is one of apathetic contentedness, and it usually means "I'm not fine but I don't want you to know" which is one notable symptom of social anxiety, now that I think about it. Whenever someone asks me how I'm doing, I always answer truthfully. I have a spectrum of replies, ranging from "great" to "good" to "kinda shitty" to "fine" to "don't talk to me", which I use to answer the question of "how are you?". If anyone ever answers "I'm fine", then I ask again and again until they answer truthfully, because annoyance begets honesty.

Back to the subject of my stress, I've gotten on track with my usual homework, but the problem isn't that. The problem is the projects, particularly research projects. My robotics project I'm merely behind on, and I'll catch up on it over spring break, so that's not as prevalent an issue (provided my mother's boyfriend comes over to help me out). Research projects, however, have always been my weak point. I got a 0 on my fall theatre final because I didn't even bother with a research project, and only passed the semester with a 75 because it's theatre, do the math (tip: there are three 6 week periods, averaged together with the final grade). The funny thing is I sometimes imagine myself as a hunter in the Supernatural universe, which involves a ton of research, which I would hate. It's like I have an invisible Lucifer for real life.

Sometimes I am Lucifer, sometimes it's other people. Lucifer is within all of us.

Ignoring the idea that we all have a devil on our shoulders, I'm still hanging in there, somewhat easier than my usually pessimistic blog posts entail. That's why I listen to Shinedown. Sometimes the music works, sometimes it doesn't, but whenever it does is worth it. I love music, and I love to lose myself in it and become someone different (they're usually somewhat similar in personality, character, and yeah, it's basically just me implanted in another universe). I love writing fanfiction somewhat more, however, because when I become someone else, I embody the voices of the protagonists, and I let go of my earthly attachment to myself. I forget that I'm sitting here. I forget my anxiety. I forget that I'm self-conscious. I'm self-conscious of myself, I'm self-conscious of my monologue, I'm self-conscious of how I come across to people, and I forget it all when I send this world elsewhere.

Of course, I don't come across as self-conscious, because I'm a good actor (my theatre teacher will be proud of that one), but I feel as if I am. The fact of my inner self-consciousness and my outer cheerful demeanor is a prime example of my ongoing conflict. Day after day, I fight myself, and combined with the stress of school and life and my parents, I really do die every day and become anew.

Class is almost over...I don't want to go

Once again, I seem suicidal and depressed, and the truth is we're always gonna be depressed. Anyone who takes an hour and thinks through everything about everything can't possibly retain a fully positive outlook, which is only possible in a hot shower. I'll never give up, I'll never kill myself, but I can't control my thoughts, or can I?

Sometimes, perhaps, if I'm listening to Shinedown.