me so krazie

ok, i am a complete lunatic, for the record. today at work i had a panic attack and i had thoughts running through my mind that i was dying. i couldn’t concentrate on the work or think straight enough to do my job so i talked with my supervisor and left work 2 hours early. which means, of course, that i will be paid for 2 hours less work than i would have ended up being paid otherwise. so, what was making me so upset? here is the rundown:

i have a panic attack disorder, known as panic disorder, anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or something like that. generally, it effects me in 3 major ways. number one, it gives me panic attacks, usually ones where i have hypochondria, meaning that i think i am dying and my mind makes up different theories for medical problems i might have that are about to kill me within a few minutes and i am doomed. the second effect is, it gives me diarrhea and flatulence and a very uncomfortable digestive system, causing intense pain in my lower digestive tract and requiring me to take a shit again and again and again, and i wipe my ass so many times and make it so sore and painful, it starts bleeding all over the toilet paper. perhaps there is some obsessive/compulsive component to my need to keep wiping my ass until there is not the slightest hint of anything brown on the toilet paper. who knows? there are some things i do that calm me down, that also might be sort of obsessive/compulsive. like i use sharp implements like scissors to scrape off dead skin from my toes and cut my toenails really short, but i actually chop off living tissue and make myself bleed on a pretty regular basis. i also do this to my fingernails and the skin around them, but not as bad as on my toes. and i have athlete’s foot between my toes that has been there for almost 20 years, since i was a small child. it has never been cured, it has just gotten stronger over time. i regularly scrape away the dead skin left by the athlete’s foot, sometimes causing bleeding, and underneath, the raw, living skin becomes exposed to the air, once i am finished. then a day later, that skin is dead, and i scrape it off, again. i wonder how my body keeps producing a new layer of skin every single day, for 20 years. kind of insane... i was maybe 7 years old when i started this, and i have never stopped. if i go for a day or two without doing it, the skin starts to get kind of thick between by toes and there are multiple layers of dead skin... and then eventually they can come off on their own, but it is actually a lot more painful if i let it happen that way, since when it gets thick, the dead skin comes off and brings the live skin underneath with it.

ok. so i am a weirdo with bad hygiene who has engaged in a form of bodily self-mutilation since i was a young child. what else? oh yes, the anxiety disorder. it makes me avoid anything i find frightening or distasteful or whatever. i make use of a “defense mechanism” known as “avoidance”, as the default action to take whenever i am confronted with a problem. i try to bury my problems away and pretend they don’t exist, and they just fester in the background, getting worse, and subconsciously i never stop thinking about how bad they are, and it just eats away at me, making me crazier and crazier, until i just can’t take it anymore and go nuts. at that point, i usually actually do something directly to solve the problem, in a brief period of hyperactive anxious hysteria, and only when it is done can i start to calm down again. needless to say, i am a very bad procrastinator, and wait until the last minute to do important things. and what about things that do not have any definite timetable or deadline or due date? in those cases, i almost always neglect the problem completely, and fail to do anything whatsoever to fix it. and in fact, whenever i have an opportunity to fix it, i repress my urge to solve the problem, and force myself to do nothing and let the problem get worse, because i am afraid of the unknown. the only life i know is the life like this, where i never solve any of my problems. i am so afraid of change, of having things that i am not already accustomed to happening to me, that i try to avoid it at all costs. this fear of change, this habitual behavior, is part of my asperger’s syndrome. another part of my asperger’s is my social withdrawal and avoidance of other people. lately i have been trying hard to socialize and try to make friends, and keep the few i have, and talk to people. i have been making some good progress here but nowhere near enough. my biggest failure is on the romantic/dating/sexual front, where my complete inaction and avoidance of any situation that might put me at risk of making any progress has been quite horrendous. i am utterly disappointed and frustrated and befuddled by my steadfast refusal to actually do anything in pursuit of romance or any sort of relations with the opposite sex. i am a very horny, young heterosexual male, who thinks sexual thoughts about attractive young women constantly, yet i simply cannot bring myself to talk to the attractive young women most of the time. and when i do, my inner demons ensure that i fuck it up quite badly, or even if i manage to have the self-control not to make an utter fool of myself, my ubiquitous tendency to avoid situations i am unfamiliar with causes me to be utterly incapable of simply asking a girl out. period. oh i think about asking a girl out. i decide to do it, and my resolve is firm. and i decide whom to ask out, and what time would be right. and then when the time comes, i simply cannot bring myself to say to her what i have already made a firm decision to say no matter what. instead, i do nothing. my ability for my conscious mind to directly control my own actions is completely shattered at that point, and consciously i am thinking, “what the hell is wrong with you? ask her out!! you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!! you know you want it more than anything!! do you really want to be miserable? why must you always sabotage yourself like this!! you are the biggest loser in the world, and a complete and utter fool!! i hate you!! i hate myself!! i am such a loser!! i wish i was never born!! i am so pathetic it is unbelieveable!! i would have never imagined that at 24 years old, this would be all that i would ever amount to!! my life is such a complete failure!! why is everybody else so much better than me?? i just want to be just like them, just a normal, regular person!! i am sick and tired of being weird and different!! what kind of cruel joke is it for me to be alive on this stupid planet, doomed to die someday, and cursed with these ridiculous mental problems that keep me from ever getting anything i want?? what is the point of even doing anything, ever? why even bother? this is pathetic. oh well, i might as well go back to living my stupid life as usual. it’s not like i have any other choice, except for suicide, which is the most ridiculously stupid idea ever. i mean, i still need to spread my seed and produce offspring before i die, or else my dna will be forever lost from the gene pool. and that would be pathetic, because most humans are the most inferior scum imaginable. our entire species is just one big joke, and we will destroy ourselves within the next 100 years most likely. but i might as well keep going in this fiasco, because ultimately i am quite interested in what the outcome will be. if i were to die any time soon, i would miss finding out how we humans manage to destroy ourselves completely. i can’t believe i am even attracted to the inferior female human scum! we humans are all a pathetic and inferior species, compared to virtually any advanced alien race, so why do we even bother continuing this pointless existence on this 3rd world planet? i want to go to the moon, because at least the moon has a superior race of alien beings, known as the mooninites. those guys are awesome! i can’t wait until i see them in the next episode of aqua teen hunger force! that show kicks ass!”

ok, so you see how i think. like a complete lunatic. anyway, so, there was this girl at work, the first week and a half i worked there, up until thursday last week, and we talked all the time, and i kind of liked her. sure, she had her share of problems too, and wasn’t perfect, but she had the prettiest smile... and her buxom busom was quite enthralling, too, especially on the one day she wore an outfit that showed some cleavage! yikes! that day i had a woody so big, he was in more movies than woody harrelson and woody allen combined! nice girl too. except when she was mean. but regardless, she was always quite interesting. graduated high school at age 15, and got a bachelor’s degree at age 20, and had been out of college 2 years. she was a real racist too, she told me she hates black people. had an abortion once, because her father made her, and now she is obsessed with having someone impregnate her so she can have some more kids. i was kinda planning on having the biological father be me... sigh... but she moved away, to the other side of the country, all of a sudden, when her mom got deathly ill, and she is not moving back. and apparently she is never coming back to binghamton again, at least not to live. still, i miss her. she was such a great, interesting person. i mean, sometimes she said stuff i thought was stupid. like how she believed in horoscopes and astrology and all that nonsense. but see, i don’t need to have a girl who is a genius or who only believes in things that are true, or who is right about everything. i just liked her as a person, and because i found her attractive, and she just had such an interesting personality, and got along with me so well. oh well. maybe people who are racist are not ones we should associate with. but i think her admission to racism was really more of an indication that she is brutally honest, that she tells the truth, and has the integrity to admit it when she has a problem, rather than pretending there is nothing wrong. i actually had not really decided on what my plans with her were. i thought maybe she might be girlfriend material, or maybe just a friend, or someone i might have sex with, or maybe things might not work out at all and we might just end up going our separate ways. i never really put all my eggs in one basket or anything with her; i always was making other plans about other girls i liked. but i think the main thing to take away from this is, i am so lonely and starved for human affection that i am very much willing to compromise about who i am willing to have a relationship with. and i am even willing to have a relationship with someone if i strongly disagree with a large percentage of what they believe in. because ultimately, i can separate the person from the beliefs. and it is the person i like. there was just a certain sparkle in her eyes, a certain spirit, that is all too lacking in many people, and that was what i really liked about her, more than anything. it is kind of boring not having her around, sitting in the cubicle next to me at the office anymore.

and the other people who sat in cubicles near me, they are all gone too. i don’t know what happened to them. none of them were here today. i felt alone, abandoned, hung up and left to dry. when i left tonight i saw one, and she had been moved from the offices upstairs to work on something downstairs. i was glad to hear this, because i was worried she had left the workplace entirely, and quit. i hate to be losing my co-workers like this. now i have to either become friends with the people who have worked there a long time, or find some new people getting jobs there and get to know them. but godddammit... i need to have someone at the office i can be friends with and talk to and stuff. i am starved for attention and affection and basically just want some human contact, some form of positive social interaction, because i feel so empty inside, and i need somebody else to make me whole again. for all my life i have been a rather antisocial person who does not talk with others much at all, and especially not with young women, because my attraction to them is so unbearably strong that it renders me emotionally incapable of dealing with the situation of talking to them. i live with my parents but all too often they point out my faults and things i am not doing correctly with my life, instead of focusing on the positive; when they are like this, being around them just makes me miserable. so i try to avoid them, unless they are being nicer and not nagging me incessantly about my failure to do this or that. it is bad enough that i cannot get myself to do things that i have firmly decided to do, and dealing with my own laziness and refusal to end bad habits or start good ones. but having other people join in on the internal criticism of myself, out loud, vocally, reinforces this internal self-hate even more. my self-loathing is unparalleled; i daresay, it is impossible that anyone else in this world hates and despises themselves as much as i do myself. now of course i do want to get better, and i do not think it is hopeless; well sometimes i do think it is hopeless, but only during periods of panic, depression, or despair.

but on sunday, i was over at the neighbor’s house, helping put the cover over the pool for the winter. there were some nasty bugs out; gnats is what they are called, apparently. they are similar to mosquitoes but smaller and just look like tiny blurs under the pale glow of the evening sky. a large number of them were surrounding me, flying all over, and they ended up all attacking my right leg. i was wearing a bathing suit and nothing else. things seemed fine, until 2 days later, on tuesday, when the gnat bites swelled up and became big and red and inflamed and quite painful. so at work today, i had intense pain on my right leg. i also had diarrhea and gas caused by my anxiety problems. and i wiped my ass so often that night, over many visits to the bathroom, that it became extremely painful, probably twice as strong as the pain from my right leg. i also had a pounding headache. and i felt quite tired, but also like i had too much caffeine. i simply had not slept well the night before, for one thing. and the coffee i drank right before work was maybe a bad idea in retrospect. anyway, all the co-workers who usually sat near me, who i knew and loved, they were all gone now, and i felt all alone. i was in pain. and i was nervous. they handed out reports to each employee on our job performance. how fast we type, how many mistakes, etc. the reports are quite cryptic. but some of the stuff i found kind of alarming, so i asked a supervisor about it, and it turns out i actually did pretty well, compared to other people who have just been on the job a week and a half. but still, the stress of thinking for maybe 2 or 3 minutes that i had awful job performance and might get fired... that was just awful. i mean sure, the job pays next to nothing, and is only through a temp agency... but still... this is a matter of my honor, of my good name. being fired because of bad job performance, i would never want such a grave dishonor to besmirch my good name, no matter what the job was. i pride myself on the good work that i do, and i am an obsessive perfectionist. so that bothered me too. and earlier in the day i had had an argument with my mother which was still on my mind and bothering me a bit. also, i was supposed to cash my first paycheck today, but i did not get to the credit union in time; i had to go straight to work from my house since i did not have enough time to stop along the way to cash the paycheck. so at the subway restaraunt, i was kind of disturbed by the fact that i only have $3 in cash left, and the rest of my money is in my bank accounts, which are almost empty, or in the paycheck that has yet to be cashed. so i paid with my credit card, after asking if they took credit cards and (luckily!) hearing a positive response. that episode shook me, because i pride myself on always carrying enough cash around on hand to deal with any normal everyday situation that involves spending a reasonably small amount of money.

and at the job, employees are expected to eventually be able to process 3 or more documents every minute, on average. i cannot even do half that! my failure to be fast enough was really getting to me. i was not reading the stuff on the screen fast enough, i was not typing fast enough, i was not moving and clicking the mouse fast enough, and i was not thinking fast enough. and despite all my slowness, i still kept making mistakes. i felt hopeless! there is just so much time pressure, when you have to be so fast, fast, fast, and work a total of 8 hours, divided into 4 bite-size chunks of 2 hours with breaks in between. i had so many problems on my mind, weighing me down. and last night, i ate a tremendous quantity of cheese-free lasagna (with just the noodles and sauce and meat and vegetables). my anxiety-ridden lower digestive tract was quite upset and in turbo mode, especially after the cup of coffee right before work. so my diarrhea and gas problem were both out of control. and the right leg was doing horribly. all my co-workers that i knew were gone and i was left working with a bunch of strangers. so to chill out, i decided i needed to take a chill pill; namely, an anti-anxiety medication. i also took a painkiller to dull the pain from my right leg and my sore on-the-verge-of-bleeding ass, as well as my headache. i was sweating profusely and probably hyperventilating too. and you know what? i took a third pill, an anti-gas (anti-flatulant) pill. the third pill was almost too big to swallow. and after i swallowed the third pill i started to feel really weird. i got sweatier than ever; a cold sweat, of course. my heart was pounding. i felt like my head was going to explode. i felt disoriented and couldn’t think straight or concentrate on my job. my ass and right leg still hurt like hell. all the strangers around me kept typing studiously and paying me no heed. i started wondering, did i follow the package directions properly for that anti-gas pill? so i looked at the package, and whaddaya know, it says to chew thoroughly before swallowing. and you know what? i had not chewed it at all, whatsoever, before swallowing. suddenly my mind was filled with pictures of my intestines filling up with air from the mixing of an acid and a base, and exploding, with blood and guts everywhere, all inside my body. then the internal bleeding starts to get out of control, and meanwhile, fecal material starts to enter my bloodstream now that the blood vessels and intestinal walls have been shattered. within less than a minute, i am dead. or so i imagined it happening. the sweating was getting out of control, even though i felt quite cold, and my heart racing and that annoying headache and the pain, the pain that never went away... it was all too much to bear. for a few minutes, i kept typing, kept doing my job, tried to distract myself from my hypochondria and my crazy imaginings of medical problems, but it did not work. i kept getting more and more agitated, and soon the 3rd break of the evening was coming up. i promptly went to my supervisor and explained the situation, how i was having a panic attack and kept having thoughts about medical problems and me dying, and i could not think straight, and i needed to go home since i could not possibly keep doing my job for another 2 hours. so my supervisor said i could go, and i went back and got my stuff, and i left.

i hope tomorrow is a better day. show me some love in the comments section, people. i want to know you care. even if you are some anonymous person off the internet. i just want us all to be one big happy family, all of humanity, all getting along and loving each other. i mean, we all share the same common ancestors, so we are all distant cousins of each other. i am sure that i will be fine anyway, but i would just like to have some positive affirmation so i can feel better about myself. things have been so nuts recently, but i am feeling better now than a few hours ago. and it was good to get all this out of my system and express myself like this. i hope all of you can get something out of it too, maybe. in case anyone else has problems like mine. i dunno. but, for now, since my emotional stability is back for the time being, i should focus on more practical matters, like all the things i have been avoiding doing in order to preserve my sanity. because, what sanity is there for me to preserve? i might as well go for it, and do things that need to be done, rather than being lazy and avoiding things i dislike because they seem to cause emotional problems in the short term. because in the long term, that is the only way i can have good emotional health. be sure to leave some nice comments for me, please! i love all of you people reading this blog, even the lurkers who never post! even if you do not leave a comment, i will still get the message telepathically. haha. no. just kidding. i don’t believe in any supernatural shit. but please. leave some kind of comment. and if you leave a nasty comment... be warned, i am about to make a vague threat to you that probably won’t have any effect at all. those of you who leave nasty comments will be sorry... oh will you ever be sorry. don’t even ask what i will do to you, or what horrible fate awaits you. haha, how was that for a vague threat? maybe a little too creepy. i dunno. but now for some vague promises of rewards. if you post a nice comment to this post of mine, you will be greatly rewarded, if not by me, than by someone else, maybe not a person, or even a tangible entity, but in some way, in some sense, you truly will be rewarded handsomely. perhaps in material terms, perhaps in a deeper sense, but the rewards will come.

and one last thing. get mozilla firefox 2 beta 2. that is a direct order. i want everyone to download that program, and try it out. if you like it, keep using it, and eventually it will auto-update to the final release of firefox 2.0, once it comes out, as well as future releases after that. and if you don’t like it, complain to the developers. then maybe the final release of firefox 2.0 will be better, after the developers take your complaints into consideration. 99% of extensions for firefox 1.5 work if you use the nightly tester tools extension. as for themes, please try the default theme for a while, and give feedback to the developers on it, because the default theme is brand new and experimental and personally i think it sucks ass. the downloads page of richmcgrew.com has a nice list of themes that work on firefox 2 beta 2, although you have to scroll down quite a ways and it might be a little hard to find at first. by the way, i think richmcgrew.com is the greatest website ever to exist in the history of the internet, although i despise its webmaster, rich mcgrew. he is still on my “dead to me” board, but i am willing to move him back up to the “on notice” board if he shapes up. and maybe someday he might shape up so much, he isn’t even on notice anymore! yeah right! alright everyone, post your comments already!