Back on July 5 I had this to say:
After having a grand day yesterday I think my subconscious didn't want it to end, because I absolutely could not get to sleep last night. I was exhausted; I hit the sack at around 2 AM and proceeded to toss and turn until 5 AM. Xanax at 3 only made me groggy; finally about 4:30 I took a dose of NyQuil, and I was asleep by 5.Now: Sunday I didn't get to bed before 4 AM and I know I didn't fall asleep before 5; and I woke up around 11-ish to go over to Og's place. So I didn't get more than six hours' sleep Sunday, all told...yet now it's past 5 AM on Monday morning and I haven't been to bed yet. In fact, I am only now just starting to get tired after being awake more than 18 hours on 6 hours' (or less) sleep.
Xanax always knocks me out; WTF.
Anyway, I'm still tired, and all I can think about doing is crawling back into bed and getting some more sleep...and I can't think of a single reason not to. So that's what I'm going to do.
WTF? Well--going out and doing something social is what did it both times!
I have no life right now. My day consists of taking care of chores for Mom, blogging, running errands, and doing my own chores; none of this requires any serious interaction with people I'm not related to. Sure, I interact with strangers--store clerks, bank personnel, whatever--but I don't do any real socializing with them. Nor do I have much occasion to do things other than play computer games, by myself.
So when I actually get to spend time with friends, I get all amped up. And then I can't sleep even if I want to.
Last night I was dubbing Kimi ni Todoke while listening to anime music and singing along with it, and acting almost completely unlike my normal self. It's kind of amazing, in a way.
I'm kind of stupid in that I often don't know what the hell's going on in my head. Depression, anxiety, happiness, whatever--it often only occurs to me some time after I've been feeling whatever way it is: "Hey! Wait a minute!" Sometimes other people have to point it out to me: "You know, you're probably...."
It's only natural to be happy when you get to go have some fun (for once); but it's also kind of worrisome for me that I get this spazzed over something like this. I'm normally so phlegmatic about everything that it's a normal occurrence for people to ask me at parties, "Hey, are you having fun?"
Being the kid everyone picked on is what did that to me. When you're at the bottom of the pecking order, the last thing you want to do is let anyone know you're in a good mood, because they'll be sure to ruin it for you. *sigh* (Then when you graduate, you get the "class grouch" award. Gee, I don't know why I was always in such a bad mood; I mean, I only had EVERY-FUCKING-BODY picking on me. In an environment where fighting was absolutely not tolerated, ever, under pain of expulsion, so there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.)
(It's really a good thing that school shootings had not been invented when I was in high school.)
...anyway, point is, this is something new for me. It might just be because I am mind-numbingly bored and don't realize it; I am just stupid enough for that to be possible. Then I go and do something fun and social, and wheee!!
There were other times in my life when I had few or no friends and rarely got to socialize; I don't recall this kind of thing happening then. Of course, I was much younger then (grade school) so God alone knows whether or not this is actually typical of me, or something new and exciting for me to worry about.
Being in the situation I was in, making new friends always included a cautious period where I wasn't sure things were on the level. People don't like feeling like you don't trust them, but I couldn't afford to trust right away. I still have that problem with being reserved around new people, and it's one reason I have such trouble making friends. I just can't trust very easily, most of the time, even when I want to; I've got too much sad experience with people who I thought were my friends abusing my trust.
Somehow, your own uneasiness around strangers translates into them being uneasy around you.
That's probably why I enjoy Kimi ni Todoke so damn much. At the beginning of the series, Sawako has never had any real friends (at age 15!) and she's amazed to meet people who actually seem to like her. She becomes friends with Ayane and Chizuru, she's extremely happy with this but she's afraid to say, "These two are my friends!" because she doesn't want to presume. Instead she says, "I really want to be friends with them, if that's possible!"
(By the time I was 15 I had several good friends, so I was one up on Sawako.)
Sawako is incredibly positive, despite being such an outcast for her entire life up until high school. Of course, she wasn't picked on; she just didn't have any friends. There's a big difference. (I would have been fine with having nearly everyone just ignore me.) Anyway, I really identify with Sawako, which is why I like the series so much.
(Also, Hana Yori Dango--Tsukushi is picked on by the entire student body of Eitoku; no wonder I identify with her and like that series so much. ...if I'd had 1/49th of Tsukushi's moxie when I was in high school, things would have been very different.)
So: I'm just going to have to bear in mind from now on that whenever I get to go do social things, I should expect to be all wound up like the Tasmanian Devil for half a day afterwards. Maybe next time I can have the stuff ready to paint the living room or something--y'know, get some good use out of all this energy.
Instead of singing in Japanese and scaring the cat, y'know.