performance anxiety

I was thinking about the rather tumultuous weekend I have just had. I am now recoiling from the horror of my personality, and wondering what sorts of god awful things I unleashed onto my unsuspecting work colleagues. Poor things....but I had some amazing and intense conversations (Kate F). I love it when you talk to someone and feel warmed by their vitality and determination. Those are the kinds of people who provide comfort and stability for others. I am always impressed by the expanse of other people's lives. As adults our lives are so enormous. When I was a child I thought that adult life would be ordered and complete, tempered by those filial and parental loving moments. But it is a gaping yawn of instability and chaos. I don't like to use the word chaos, it seems inappropriately dramatic. When I looked at my parents lives, they seemed so real, and so beautifully crafted and structured. When is it that you first become aware of the desire to fashion yourself as a Proper Person? Now I know my parents, and I see the seams, and the gasps of hurt and confusion, and I see myself. Sometimes there is an absence of real communication.

On Saturday night I did my ususal I Love You thing. When I am drunk and emotional everything takes on a monumental significance. Same for everyone I suspect. In an almost superstitious way, I had to tell Andrew a story about how much I love him before he went home. He's so used to it, and I just give him a look and he says 'I know you love me mate'. I feel so horrendously guilty when I try to remember the times I did that to MP. I think I just expected him to know that I loved him. And perhaps I saw us as siamese beings, in a way that felt like we were beyond love or relationships, as if we had just become aligned intensities.


Walking to the shop this morning I thought about emotional hooks, (like tenterhooks perhaps, TENTERHOOKS???? What is that?) and how I so easily become deeply connected and involved with other people's emotional lives. For me, writing this is difficult and strange, and it certainly isn't something I am comfortable with. I am wondering how far I will actually go with this. It is an interesting process of exposure....so.....I become connected, like protein. Today I have this gentle wolfy feeling. I am refashioning myself, I'm protean....which is kind of weird for an obsessive person who is always seeking whole things. But when I think about being partial, mutable, hypocritical, I realise that it is all I want to be. Perhaps the greatest achievement for me is the knowledge that I can allow myself these things.