Flustered: otherwise known as ‘deer in headlights’ when it applies to social situations. I realize that everyone gets flustered from time to time but for me it’s burned a lot of energy and triggered absurd levels of stress. What if the thing I say makes this situation worse? What do I say? Will I say the thing I’m thinking of or will I say some random thing that upsets others? What if I’m annoying when someone is in a poor frame of mind to handle it?
Sometimes people are very helpful and enthusiastic about giving advice but seem to have no concept of when that advice needs to come into play. ‘You remember what you said the other day? I’d like to cash that in now because you’re cranky as fuck and I have a list of things to do’ or ‘that thing you said, I’d like to do that because the way you’re talking is horrible and I can’t concentrate’
The advice was ‘walk away’ but I was never able to when it was important for me to do so. I noticed that sometimes people suffered from the same problems that I did which was terrifying; to what degree? More unanswerable questions came to life to dance around in my mind.
It often feels like being stuck between gears {on a car} or some game spot glitch—the first thing to do is calm down, which is the challenge when people are staring at me with their own thoughts and experiences and interpretations of what I’ve got going on inside of me during my delayed response.
Do I truly need assistance from support or can I get out of this myself? Do I randomly press buttons or do I have a teleportation stone? Perhaps I can simply log out {when the game is the type to give you a body only at certain locations} but if that’s the case, how much experience or whatever will I lose? Is it worth the sacrifice? Should I alert support? How much time has passed already while I’m processing my own reality in a way that scares the shit out of certain people? Can I simply smile and walk away? Perhaps I injected myself into this conversation and no one will miss someone who wasn’t even invited to participate…
