See that last sentence? A sane, rational person would have written “an unwelcome guest at a dinner party,” but not me. I started to write “unwelcome guest,” and then my brain said, “Hang on. What’s even more un welcome than an unwelcome guest? A fucking polar bear.” Then the normal, slow-to-intercede, good side of my head comes over and says, “No. No one is going to get that. Just write ‘guest’ instead.” Then the bad side is all, “Really? Because it makes total sense to me. If an unwanted guest shows up at your party the worst thing that’ll happen is maybe you’ll run out of Tostitos early. If a polar bear shows up at a party there’s going to be blood everywhere. Polar bears aren’t welcome ANYWHERE.” And then the good side would smile patronizingly and sigh, saying, “No one understands your logic, asshole. And also polar bears are welcome some places. Like zoos. And Coke commercials.” But the bad side of my mind isn’t having it and he’s yelling, “The cage at the zoo is there to keep them from us. BECAUSE THEY’RE UNWELCOME,” and then the good side is all, “Well, if you hate polar bears so damn much then why did we go to the zoo on Saturday?” and the bad side is all, “Because you promised me a blow job, you condescending bitch,” and then the good side just gasps like she can’t even believe the bad side would even go there, because that shit’s supposed to be private, bad side, and she gets all sullen and sanctimonious and maybe we should just leave now because this whole thing is uncomfortable, and why does this feel like domestic violence? And also how can the bad side of my mind even get a blow job? Is it a dude? This whole thing is confusing, and feels somehow sexist. See, if I were trying to impress you I would have deleted this whole paragraph and just changed “polar bear” to “unwanted guest,” but I’m leaving it all out there because I’m too lazy to erase it. And also to show you the difficult truth about the pain of living with a mental illness. Mostly that first part, though. And basically this entire paragraph is what it’s like in my head all the time. So, yeah. It’s a goddamn mess in here.
I thank God, though, that I do at least possess the good side of my brain, because I once had a neighbor who lost the impulse-control part of his mind in a car accident and would randomly yell strange things at me when I’d go check the mailbox. Things like “Hi, pretty lady! Your butt is getting bigger!” and “I’d still plow that ass!” I’d always just force a smile and wave at him, because, yes, it was kind of insulting, but I’m fairly sure he meant it to be complimentary. I mean, that guy didn’t even have a good side of the brain to filter his thoughts, so it seems a bit selfish of me to not be thankful for mine, even if it is kind of broken and seems to recognize how fucked up the things that I’m talking about are only after I’ve already said them. It’s like I have a censor in my head, but she works on a seven-second delay . . . well-meaning, but perpetually about seven seconds too late to actually do anything to stop the horrific avalanche of shit-you-shouldn’t-say-out-loud-but-I-just-did.
In a way it’s a gift to be able to recognize your faults, but in real life I find myself saying terrible things to people, and the part of me that recognizes how inappropriate what I just said was screams at me, “No! We don’t talk about vibrators to clergymen!” Then I get distracted by all the screaming going on in my head, and I panic and here come the credit card numbers again. Or I’ll blurt out something else to fill the awkward silence, but for some reason the part of my mind that doesn’t have a filter can think only about necrophilia, and the part of my brain that recognizes that necrophilia is never an appropriate topic yells, “NECROPHILIA IS BAD,” and so then I panic and hear myself start talking about why necrophilia is bad, and the part of me that is slightly sane is shaking her head at myself as she watches all the people struggle to think of an appropriate way to respond to a girl at a cocktail party who is against necrophilia. I feel sorry for those people. Not just because they have to be there to witness that train wreck, but also because who is going to disagree with the evils of necrophilia? Nobody, that’s who. And if you try to change the subject it’s just going to look like you’re a secret proponent of necrophilia who just doesn’t want to admit it in public. That’s probably why, when I’m speaking to groups at dinner parties, those people slowly back away to join any other conversation, and I end up standing alone and talking to myself. Which is awesome. Because if there’s one thing more awkward than a girl talking to strangers at a cocktail party about sex with dead people, it’s a girl at a cocktail party talking to herself about the exact same thing.
This is why whenever I see disheveled homeless people on the street, screaming to no one in particular about how bears are evil masterminds trying to take over the city, I immediately assume that years earlier they’d found themselves discussing this subject at a dinner party, horrified themselves into a complete mental breakdown, and then everyone else just wandered away. And now here this homeless woman is, years later, still trying to find a way to wrap up this conversation with dignity and failing miserably. This is why I always give homeless people a dollar and some Xanax. Because I know exactly what they’re going through. Also, I like to nod and try to add something to the conversation, like “It’s an interesting theory, however, I’m not sure whether bears have the cognitive ability to create a complex system of government,” but usually the person I’m talking to just stares past me, fixated on a long-gone horrified audience that now exists only in her head. Then my husband will pull me away, lecturing me about the dangers of provoking the homeless. He doesn’t see what I see: the desperate face of a person who has been driven mad by a dinner party.
You would think Victor would be more sympathetic, since he’s actually witnessed the emotional devastation I leave behind when forced to mingle, but until only recently he had dismissed my ability to completely destroy both our reputations in a single dinner party as an overexaggeration on my part. I can only assume that he placed so little importance on my inability to deal with social situations because (a) my actual anxiety attacks were so severe that in comparison my social awkwardness seemed mild, and (b) he just wasn’t paying that much attention.