Tonight I was talking to this guy Matt I recently met about hard times and substance abuse, and we were agreeing that neither of us liked bars that much unless there was live music to make it worthwhile, and that drunk people were mostly a drag.
This woman Danielle I don’t know too well and IndieGirl I talk to sometimes whose name I have never got straight suddenly thundered in and sat down with us. IndieGirl was hammered. She’s always an entertaining high-speed talker. After drinking all day she’s a loud, random, entertaining, high-speed talker. She had kissed the bartender at the last bar and was celebrating and/or agonizing over this fact. I made fun of her a little bit but she didn’t mind. Meanwhile Danielle was explaining to me that her fortysomething boyfriend (she’s an undergrad) wasn’t the same one as before, and that she had traded the previous fortysomething boyfriend with kids in for a new one.
IndieGirl’s phone rang and it was the bartender, who of course wanted to meet her after work. At this point it was 8 pm and she was so drunk that she kept repeating GOD I AM SO DRUNK! until I was repeating it with her. I told her that she would wake up at around 2:30 with a pounding headache, simmering nausea, and a soul full of regret and then the phone would ring and it would be the guy. She yelled GODDAMN IT YOU ASSHOLE YOU’RE RIGHT. She then drunk-dialed her mother.
All in all she was a pretty friendly and entertaining drunk. She high-fived me twice when I made fun of her. I should have manipulated her into casual, pointless sex. Why do I always think of these things afterwards?
Eventually they left to get into additional trouble. Fortunately Danielle wasn’t drunk. Matt and I were looking at each other like: well then. Drunk people!
Andy gave updates on the babygrinder industry that as usual scared the shit out of me, and Cat showed up, and other people showed up who only show up on holidays. That was kind of cool.
I actually don’t know what to do when I feel badly treated by someone, but I don’t think it’s really something that can be fixed, and it makes me want to fix it when that’s not useful, and I can’t get rid of the person or the situation or the feeling. Noticing that tonight made me realize that one thing I’m very bad at handling is crap situations in which there’s nothing I could or should do. I feel a sense of misplaced urgency that’s maddening when action would either be useless or destructive.
I’m a “make it better” person, I guess.
Los Primos makes one fucking great pork taco. Especially when you’re not one of the two abusively stereotypical mortgage bro guys who keeps calling the Mexican guy behind the counter “my brother” as he asks for free stuff.
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I actually don’t know what to do when I feel badly treated by someone, but I don’t think it’s really something that can be fixed, and it makes me want to fix it when that’s not useful, and I can’t get rid of the person or the situation or the feeling. Noticing that tonight made me realize that one thing I’m very bad at handling is crap situations in which there’s nothing I could or should do. I feel a sense of misplaced urgency that’s maddening when action would either be useless or destructive.
This is me. I never know when to quit trying, either. I hold out ridiculous hopes until I can’t tell how aggravating I’m being. Bleah. I hate non-fixables. Especially when I’m the only one who thinks something is wrong.
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One thing that made sense to me while researching the cognitive basis of this is that problem-solving logic gets inappropriately applied by some of us. It’s actually an ADD-like thing in some ways. As it was explained to me, when you have the kind of mind that likes to solve problems (untying nots, doing a web search, etc.), you get good brain feedback from that activity. But when you’re depressed about something or you feel hurt, or there’s some other emotional situation that simply has to be endured until it ends, the problem solving reflex is very bad. What happens is that we focus very hard on the trouble and keep thinking about things to do, or how to fix or solve it, chasing that relief response we get when problems get solved at the same time we’re chasing relief from emotional stress.
Unfortunately this is rarely going to work, because most emotional pain results from things that have to either be solved with entirely different tools, or will go away on their own if left alone. Going into investigational mode can keep the healing process from happening or slow it down, analogous to picking at a sore.
What we need is the mental equivalent of the cone on a dog. For my part, I’m trying to consciously catch myself when I go into problem-solving mode about an emotional trauma and just STOP. As you know, that’s hard.
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That makes so much sense. I’m going to read this over and toss it around brainwise. I know I probably can’t use it yet, but I can have it lurking, at least. Thanks so much!!
p.s. purple cone for me plz
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Yes!
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