Uncovering a shameful secret, social withdrawal

I was writing a note on a diary the other morning and as I was analysing their situation, I contrasted it to mine. As I finished typing the last sentence, I realised that I had found the answer to something I have been hiding from myself for two years, almost to the day.

In October, two years ago, my flatmates and I held a party at my house. The party was huge, people upstairs, downstairs, spilling out into the back courtyard and onto the road surrounding the two streets whose corner our large terrace house intersects.

Skip back to where it began. It had been years since I had lived in shared accommodation. I had shared 20 bed rooms when I was travelling but that was private in its anonymity. Now, I was revealing my life to two people, their large groups of friends and my small band of 1:1 friendships. Both of my flatmates were the type to go out every night of the week and drink and for a time there, I went along too. I wanted to make this work, I wanted to belong for the first time in a long time. I drank alot during that time, it was also an occupational hazard, as a client for many suppliers, I was being schmoozed all of the time.

I had begun to notice that I was hungry for a drink by the day’s end. "I had a taste up". I would order and take a sip and notice something come over me almost within moments. My elevated mood would be sucked from me. I was misery personified. I sat there looking at all of the younger, prettier women being courted by slobbering, desperate for a fuck suits in the bars we went to and it made me hate men.

I listened to the conversation around me, which was circular and repetitive. My friends discussed the same subjects they had chewed over the night before, the night before, the night before. I became silent, sullen, morbid, isolated. I’d often get up and tell people that I was going to get a drink or go the the bathroom and then just slip off home to the annoyance of the people around me. I felt my words slurred, my feet unsteady.

One night I remember walking down my long road home, past at least 10 pubs and bars. Towards the end, I was stumbling in stilleto boots, lurching against walls. There were some men sitting on the pub verandah that laughed and called out, "Are you ok love?". I replied with what breath and dignity I could muster, "yes thanks" and then walked up the long steep hill home.

The night of the party at my place, I wanted to impress, I wanted be able to flit around and make conversation like normal people. Instead, I started drinking too early, as I was dressing, putting on my make up. Later that night, a young guy from work that I had been out with a couple of times with let me know that had some some pills, which I took. 

At first, I felt magically wonderful, I could barely string two words together and I remember some friend of a friend trying to hit on me. By 11pm I had crashed up stairs in my own bed as the party kicked on to 5am. I woke up as everyone else was leaving or going to sleep.

I had never experienced a come down like this before. I was sick with fear and dread, I almost asked my flatmates if I could stay with them in their rooms, I roamed around the house cleaning up and feeling extremely panicked. That day became the longest day of my life. I felt so bad, I contemplated calling my mum and asking if she would take care of me. 

The next few weeks, I felt so ashamed of myself. I kept thinking of that night and how throughout the night I remember people coming in and sitting on bed, I am not sure if they were checking on me or trying to do some thing more sinister. 

Between that October and December, I went over that night in my head over and over again. I promised myself I would never do that to myself again. On January 1, I quit everything, including smoking. I began walking every day. I walked like a mad woman. I walked into the city at dawn to work and back in the evening. 

In some ways I felt better physically, however, without alcohol in my life, my social avoidance and anxiety rampaged its way back into my state of mind. I declined every invitation I received. My flat mate moved out six months later, as I did not turn out to be the reliant drinking buddy she had expected. In fact, since then I have pretty much stopped sitting in our living room, retiring to my bedroom the moment I get home from work. 

I feel sick and stupid writing this now, as I have been pretending to myself (peek a boo) that although I have been chronically depressed, that I have been functioning well in most parts of my life. I began volunteering, working long hours and kicking goals. I have since taken up full time study as well and getting strong grades. 

Just don’t ask me whether I have met any new people, or gone out to a public place in the evening, or beensome where unfamilliar. As I will probably have to tell you that I haven’t had time, that my life is so full with all of the other commitments I have. 

Only the other day, in an earlier entry, I was asking myself why I might be filling up my every waking moment (21 hours a day) with all of this activity. In one of my last sessions with the shrink, he had even pointed this out to me, "many people fill up their lives with things that help them avoid thinking about or dealing with the things they feel fearful about". I didn’t understand what he was getting at. I thought perhaps he was referring to one of his regular topics, "why wasn’t I going out to try and meet a partner or just friends?"

If I am really honest, if someone turns up at my house unnannounced, I will hide in my room upstairs. I will turn off lights. I will not answer my phone. I have been doing this for nearly 20 years. It is a hard habit to break. <

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The frustrating thing is that I have no idea why I am avoiding the contact. I am not in that frame of mind where I want to conform, or be liked by most of the people I meet. I am not worried about embarrassing myself. 

Perhaps, I am more worried about meeting someone, friend or lover, that I might have the type of emotional intensity with that I have experienced before. The kind that if you lose, you wonder how you will be able to eat your next meal, or get out of bed, or ever discuss the topic with anyone ever again. 

This avoidance does date back to early childhood for me. Where my brother from the time he could talk would chat with strangers without any inhibition, I would turn my head away and scowl if someone made an effort to engage me in conversation. 

The strange thing is that at work, people would see me as extremely capable, I have to speak in public to large groups of people, with different audiences regularly and do not experience the fear most people do when having to speak on their feet. Although I am part of the management team, I am probably the least conventional, the one that makes people laugh at the black side of life. So, this leads to a deep incongruence for them. Why is blue, the bubbly, confident person, always avoiding coming out for a drink? Why has she stopped drinking, she used to be so much fun when she did?

I have thought about maybe I should ask for help but even this makes me feel sick with anxiety because I don’t really want to have change. I am lonely but that is more bearable than being out – there.

It is my secret addiction. I don’t want people to know because I don’t want to let it go. If I get out from underneath this mask, this blanket, this wall, I will feel truly exposed.

"Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow’s joy is possible only if today’s makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one".
Andre Gide