This has to be one of the scariest posts I've ever written, and it's about NOTHING. Nothing happened yesterday. That's the point. Mostly it has to do with feelings of humiliation (the Hoster Tully voice). My therapist told me something interesting: humiliation leads to attack. We have to dig deeper into this, because maybe my humiliation goes even deeper than fear, it is the very cause of fear. The primeval feeling of "You're different, you suck, so you don't deserve to live". The answer: "RARR I'll kill you first." Humiliation, fear, rage, attack. This is me deep down, so deep that one would never imagine it beyond my cheerful mask... I myself needed all these years to see it, and I'm still working on it. When I'm afraid in social situations, I'm truly afraid someone will kill me. It's so hard to explain. On to the (non-)facts. The DVDS concert. I might have been a bit quicker with my current favourite singer, checking if he was making a tour straight on the day after he didn't win at Sanremo. On May 1, while I was in Misano for Giulia's communion, I discovered he would appear in Rimini on May 6. Damn. No way I could stay there. (Humiliation.) So I checked the site and discovered he'd have a concert on May 10 (yesterday) in Legnano. Legnano is JUST OUT OF TOWN. But transportation can be dangerous, especially at night. Also I was not sure how safe the road between the station and the theatre was. I wasted days looking for accomplices, instead of looking at once for tickets. I did not imagine he was so popular! So, no more tickets for last night. I had a plan: go there anyway by train, early; check the road in full sun, have a look around, maybe buy some swag, and maybe someone has a surplus ticket because his sister got sick or something. For the return, everybody will be swarming towards the train, if my concert experience means something. A fine plan, don't you think? Here it gets complicated. When I started getting ready, 2 things happened: 1. Panic attack when I thought of going; 2. Panic attack when I thought of not going. I was out of my mind. Nothing helped - coffee, comfort food, Xanax, a quick beer, exercise (more later about this). Whatever I chose, I was a complete wreck. Case 1 had never happened to me when I decide to do something reckless - and this is something else my therapist has pointed out; either I hide in my shell, or I burst out and attack the problem head on, no middle way. I don't go to Bro's birthday because I'm afraid of being surrounded by happy couples, but I'm ready to go to a concert alone. That's me And yet I didn't go. Some weird mechanism kicked in - that I'm TIRED of doing stuff on a dare, to prove I can do it. I'm tired of not looking for help, of just telling people what I do and if they want to come freely, great, but I'm not begging. I have friends near Legnano, maybe they could have given me a place to sleep, but asking? Nah, too proud. I'm tired of doing stuff just because I'll feel a coward if I don't do it, and doing it alone. And this is case 2 - I did feel a coward! (Note: stuff like the Israel trip doesn't count. Yes, I did it on a dare. But I was so enchanted that my fear of flying disappeared, and I don't regret a minute of it.) So I stayed at home, and I felt a fleeting relief. After all, I had the Abs lesson to look forward to, and I'd get ti work at once to get a ticket for DVDS's next concert in Crema, which is still very accessible. I'm ready to get a hotel room by myself: safer than coming back to Milan from just out of town. Meanwhile, however, more bad stuff had happened. You know when you cry about something you should NOT be crying about? Something that had made me feel humiliated. I asked a friend if we could meet to have a chat, but he was too busy. Now, I totally BELIEVE him, but tell it to my paranoia, and my humiliation grew - not to mention my sadness. Yay, Abs! Endorphines! The instructor pounds us into the ground so much that I have no time to think about anything. Then the radio started playing "Tunnel of Love" by Dire Straits. I almost had to stop and burst into tears. I'm tearing up right now at the thought. From then on I screwed up every exercise, and he rightfully pointed it out.Guess what? Humiliated. I usually laugh and joke at my clumsiness; last night I felt like sh*t. Back home, call folks, they are watching Dennis Quaid (!) on some channel. Probably my TV has that channel, but this reminded me that it HAS NOT the RAI national channels. "You have to call someone to fix your aerial." At that point I flew into a rage. The damn condo has been discussing for YEARS about a central dish for digital TV, and finally they put it up, with the consequent expense, and now I have to call someone to fix it because they didn't send me anyone ("Maybe they did, and you didn't see the notice," says Hoster's voice) and fork out a further 100 euros? The hell! By then I could have smashed something. So now I have to call my doctors too; seems the new cure doesn't work. I sleep better at night, but I still want to kill people. In fact, my mom later sent me a reassuring, comforting message, which quite moved me. "Nighty night, poor cat. Dad understood the TV problem and he'll talk to you. It will be a better day, you'll see. :)" And now that I'm writing this I'm bursting into tears, there's Elizabeth in the next room and if she sees me I'll feel humiliated again even though she's a friend. Last week I burst into tears in front of my aunt. Maybe that's what I need, a good cry, but I have to choose the target carefully, because it would be atomic. I cried to my cat when he was ill, and boy, such a cathartic cry, like a newborn baby. Pri slept all through it. Maybe I should cry to my Optimus Prime doll. Is this all? Of course not! There's Game of Thrones. Like the books, the TV show is awesome, really. And I pray every day that I never, ever read or watch something else that fascinates me so much, because all that I get from it in the end are kicks in the teeth. Is the Blackfish in S2? If he isn't, bye bye Blackfish, because it means he's not important in future books and he's going to die horribly, off-screen if possible. (My hopes are: 1. he survives the saga, 2. he dies heroically ON SCREEN at the end. The second item would crush me, but less than dying heroically OFF SCREEN and after your author has reduced you from an icon to an afterthought. Still looking at you, JKR.) We know nothing yet, so I should not worry in advance. However there's the damn HBO official guide which doesn't list him. So, either they're hiding him to simplify S1 or keep some surprises for S2, or they have already cut him AND ARE MOCKING US BY NOT TELLING US. (humiliation) I kow it sounds paranoid. I know nobody else on earth cares enough for the Blackfish to make a page for him, and HBO is not supposed to cater to me. Still it hurts, dammit, it hurts so much that I feel hostile to HBO and GRRM. This is unfair, but I don't know what else to do - last night The Red Viper (!) and I almost quarrelled with poor Ran about the mysterious sigils in the Tyrion-Cat scene at the inn, because I truly thought they were mocking us once again. (humiliation) And of course they aren't because all the rest of the show is awesome, but this is my deepest feeling. Are you scared yet? |