Wednesday, November 10

Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you, from doing all the things in life you'd like to.

Hello, my name is Gem and I am a social phobic. I get anxious about meeting friends for Sunday lunch. Work dos make me feel sick. Parties terrify me. Sheer willpower prevents me from hiding under a blanket on my sofa every time I'm required to go out and converse with people that I have never met before. For every social situation, from going to the pub to attending a friend's wedding, I am forced to choose from one of the following options:

A - Force myself to go out. Stand in the middle of the room and feel like I am drowning. Feel sick. Get very sweaty. Panic. Come home.
B - Force myself to go out. Enjoy it. Forget myself. Feel better.
C - Stay at home. Feel safe. Go to bed.
D - Stay at home. Feel horrifically guilty. Commit mental Harakiri until I pass out on the sofa from shame.

A has only occurred a few times, and when it has I've felt like a total failure as a result. B is occurring more frequently recently, but is harder to psyche myself up for. C, if I am honest, is the option I take most regularly, for less-pressing social concerns such as drinks after work or one of James' work dos. D occurs when I let down a friend, or feel unwell. It happens fairly regularly.

Many sociophobes, like these guys here, have hang-ups about the way they look. For me, it's not so much what I look like, exactly, more what I sound like when I open my mouth. I'm quite loud, always have been, so my voice stands out (I have since given a name to this; 'Teacher Voice', and it's very useful). And to further compound my shame what came out of it in school was quickly deemed to be abnormal. I withstood years of persecution by my peers for saying 'weird' things that simply came naturally to me. I'd quote Oscar Wilde at opportune moments in class, or attempt to engage others in a discussion on the merits of Reeves and Mortimer. I thought these were all very normal topics for discussion, they were at home. But apparently, in school, you are only allowed to discuss two topics: shagging and each other.

Awareness of this condition has only made it worse. Meta-cognition has ruined conversation for me, to the extent that whenever I talk to somebody I don't know very well this monologue will run in my head:

I AM HAVING A CONVERSATION. THIS CONVERSATION IS GOING WELL/BADLY (DELETE AS APPROPRIATE).

AM I SAYING THE RIGHT THINGS? PROBABLY NOT.

AM I SMILING ENOUGH? I DON'T WANT TO LOOK MEAN. MIND YOU, I DON'T WANT TO LOOK EAGER EITHER.

SHIT, THEY'VE STOPPED TALKING. I'VE SPENT TOO MUCH TIME THINKING OF WHAT TO SAY AND HAVEN'T LISTENED TO THEM.

JUST NOD AND GIVE A LITTLE HALF-LAUGH, THAT SHOULD WORK FOR MOST SITUATIONS.

OK. DID THAT. WHAT CAN I TALK ABOUT THAT ISN'T MENTAL?

THE CAT, GEM, GO WITH THE CAT...'

It'd be so easy to blame those bastards at school, wouldn't it? But the fact is that I am a grown woman and should be able to look back and learn from my own errors, and the errors of others. No, it's mostly me. I could spend all day reeling off a list of the reasons why I feel safer indoors than out at some cocktail bar. Let me begin to count the ways:


  • People, generally, annoy me. High voices annoy me. Quiet, timid voices annoy me. People with expensive clothes annoy me. Loud chewers annoy me. And people that sniff.
  • People are mean. They make snap judgements about people based on ridiculous things, such as their tone of voice, or their clothes, or the fact that they sniff.
  • People are noisy. Well, lots of people together in a room are. I have a real problem with noise differentiation, so I find rooms with lots of different conversations going on in them really scary and disorientating.
  • People smell. They really do. Some people smell worse than others.
  • People are stupid. Show me one clever person and I bet I can find at least ten stupid people to outnumber them. I'm not, by any means, a genius, but I genuinely have no idea what to say to people with marshmallow-fluff brains in a social situation. Where does one start with these people? The weather?


Occasionally I attempt to explain my 'problem' to people I meet, but it just confuses them. Or makes them think I'm mental. Or, worse, they nod sagely, join their palms in a symbol of shamanic wisdom and make snap proclamations of cod-psychology that they've gleaned from too much Trisha such as: "You know your problem, Gem? You think too much."

Thus reinforcing my opinion that I am better off indoors.

So that's it, then. I'm a sociophobic. So now what do I do? I would like to get better. I would like to be able to attend work events with my boyfriend and not feel like I am melting into the carpet, or being trodden into it. I'd go and see my GP, and perhaps try for cognitive therapy, but she's put up with enough harassment from me recently, and would probably just tell me to 'go out more'. She'd be right, wouldn't she?

Monday, November 8

Poor

Jesus Christ I am so sick of being poor. It started at university, when I received huge cheques for over a grand and had absolutely no idea how to spend them correctly. I bought a load of shit.

Then I graduated and bought a load more. I got greedy. I borrowed money to buy more shit. And so on for another few years until...

A bank machine ate my card. I went home and threw up. My work closed, and my hours were drastically reduced. Minimum payments went unpaid. Bills arrived at my parents house, and I was too scared to open them so just chucked them straight in the bin. At certain points I imagined myself banged up in a debtor's prison, like a character from Dickens. Poor Mistress Gemblesnuff, she got behind with her payments and ended up in the Marshalsea. I was terrified of bailiffs and checked my windows to make sure they were locked before I left the house.

I fell in love. I moved to London. Now I knew I had to get real and sort myself out or lose everything. I contacted a debt management agency on the recommendation of a friend and added it all up. I was sick countless times. It felt utterly unmanageable.

The debt management company were excellent. They contacted all my creditors and got them to agree to reduced payments. I started paying £300 a month to them, which was shared equally between my debtors (of which there were seven).

Years passed. I became a teacher, with a proper wage. I was even able to increase my monthly payment to try and pay my debts off more quickly.

I don't earn enough, in my opinion, for the job that I do. However, I could probably have a reasonably good quality of life if I didn't have to pay £402 to my debtors every month. I am skint within ten days of payday, and have to dole tenners out to myself to ensure I can eat until the next payday. On days like today, when I see £200 left in my account until the end of the month I want to cry.

Next year one of my most enormous debts will be cleared, a debt to HSBC totalling over £9000. This will mean that my other debts can be cleared much more quickly, because my monthly payment to each will increase. I know it's not the end of it, but I'm going to celebrate nonetheless. And whenever I see £200 in my account and want to cry I have to repeat this mantra: 'Soon. It will be over soon.'

Tuesday, November 2

25 things about me

1. I once wrote a letter to Jim'll Fix It, asking to meet the entire cast of Baywatch (I was 8).
2. The idea of terrapins existing makes me feel sick.
3. I once ate a whole box of Maltesers in under half an hour.
4. I am, despite often seeming otherwise, quite a solitary person.
5. When I was 17 I once sat outside the King's Lynn Corn Exchange for five hours in the middle of a freezing cold winter night, waiting for Mansun to come out, warming myself on the exhaust fumes from their tour bus. I caught mild hypothermia. It took me two days to thaw out.
6. The person I can't stand the thought of anything happening to is my little brother. I would crumble.
7. I listen to Prince, on average, every 3 days.
8. I know all the words to 'Snooker Loopy' by Chas & Dave.
9. Dogs love me.
10. And small children.
11. I don't really like small children.
12. I hate being overlooked more than anything.
13. I jumped off a tube train and followed a man down the platform to give him back a £2 coin that he'd dropped on the floor of the train.
14. I have had the same pillow for about 6 years. It's moulded to my head, flat as a pancake, and probably mouldy inside.
15. I once spent £500 in one go in Topshop. The £500 was part of my student loan.
16. I know A LOT about the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
17. As children, my sister and I were encouraged to refer to our genitalia as a 'doody'.
18. Christmas always makes me really depressed. I get fed up of being around people at close quarters by 3pm and storm upstairs for a nap.
19. I have a Moomin themed bathroom, with a Moomin soap dish, a Moomin toothbrush holder, a Moomin hand towel and Moomin pictures.
20. I smoked for about 10 years, until I gave up two years ago. I never told my parents.
21. I had 9 piercings at one point. I got bored and took them all out.
22. I thought Heath Ledger's Joker was sexy.
23. I use certain songs/tv shows/films as benchmarks when assessing potential suitors, but I never reveal what they are.
24. I sometimes stop and stand in the street, looking up at the London sky and feeling grateful for being alive.
25. I am petrified of ketchup.

Do Google searches and that...

Google