Luna Tail

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Pod Cycling Competition

Filed Under (Anxiety) by Cynthia [More Me!] on Jun 25, 2006 7:32 pm

Tagged Under : Anxiety

Today was my PCC. And, it went really well! My Cycle won first place! I was so nervous. Oh man… I’m more nervous doing that kind of competition than any other. Everyone is so quiet, and so serious. It’s just like a fist grabs onto my insides and tightens.

And my brain turns off. Shuts completely down. I don’t know what I’m saying, I can’t think, I can hardly process things. People talk to me and I fall into an old, unhealthy, pattern. Instead of really listening to what they say and then responding appropriately to how I feel, I just nod and smile and laugh.

Sometimes I’ve thought I’m an empath. That I can really sense what other people are feeling. And I can mirror back to them exactly the response they want. But that is stupid, because I’m compromising myself. And I’m not giving them what they really want, when they want a genuine response from a human being separate from themselves. Who just may have a different opinion.

So I smile and laugh, or frown and smile and laugh, and reply and smile and laugh, and I just look stupid. Sometimes I’m able to remind myself to try to stop, but even then, I don’t think I succeed very well.

My whole demeanor changes. Especially my tone of voice. I sound afraid. My voice shakes, and I go monotone. It’s awful. Then I know I’m doing it, and humiliation snakes up my feet, through my pelvis, and up my spine. It grips me somewhere in the small of my back, and then fingers up to my shoulder blades. There the humiliation lodges, and as long as I’m around other people it doesn’t go away.

Because I know, to the very core of my being, that I’m an idiot. I’m worthless. And no one there wants to be around me. And I prove it over and over again by how I speak and what I say.

Sometimes there is a person I meet who doesn’t care, and will talk to me anyway. Sometimes there is a kind hearted soul who just has the ability to calm me down. There are two women in the Pod Cycling world who can do that now. And I appreciate them to no end.

If they can understand what I go through, they have never admitted it. Some people just don’t want to talk about it, I guess. It’s odd. Because if they would just say something like ‘yes, I can see that in you, and I still like you anyway…’ wow, how would that be?

People just can’t talk about it. It’s really odd, because I can talk about it, and I suffer from it.