I don’t have to explain shit to anyone, but sometimes I try to explain a little. I’ll try to explain a little now, though I doubt I’ll succeed.
In the last decade or so, I’ve taken multiple Facebook vacations and/or disabled my account. I’ve also fallen off the blogosphere for months at a time. I’ve declined social invitations for months on end. I’ve cancelled plans and trips that I’ve had on my calendar all year long…never did get to take that friggin cruise.
Why?
Pffft. I wish I could say exactly how it is, how it feels sometimes, to walk a proverbial mile in my shoes. I have lines that just can’t be crossed…and once crossed, I’m out. I have to disappear. It’s trendy these days to say it’s a “trigger.” If I’ve been “triggered,” I have to bail for a while. That’s just the way it is, the way I am. I have to keep showing up for work and so I always do, but otherwise, I kinda fade off the radar for a bit.
Do I wish I had these handy dandy coping mechanisms everyone else seems to have (shopping outside their means, binge drinking, adulterous sex drugs–prescription or otherwise–to alter reality)? Yeah, sometimes, because those seem more socially acceptable than disappearing… but I also know my social weirdness fuels my writing. My social weirdness helps me get things done, but it makes me an ass, too, because everyone wonders what the fuck my problem is and I have no clear way to articulate it. I. Just. Disappear.
Then one day, I wake up and I don’t feel so distressed, so burdened, and I reappear. Not everyone hangs around to see me reappear, and that’s to be expected. I look forward to waking up and feeling less distressed sometime soon.