Whatever doesn't make you stonger will kill you.

[I'm approaching my 2000th post on this site since I migrated to the Blogger hosting. I'm going through and deleting posts that I never or will never finish. I came across this doozie from a 12/19/10. Can you believe I don't remember writing this? It's so verbose. I'm guessing I gave up on it because I try not to spend too much time/work too hard on this site and when a piece of writing gets to this point I have to work at not being redundant. Maybe I didn't post it because it seemed too personal. However, I'm going to post it at the 11:11 because it's too much typing to throw away. Sold as-is. I haven't even read it fully, just skimmed, typed this, and hit 'post.' Enjoy, I guess.]

Between my Communications degree and an unhealthy self consciousness in existence since about the third grade, I can sense nonverbal and paralanguage as well as the best of them (whoever "them" is, I have no idea). As an unlikely yet somehow prolific bouncer in the mid 2000s, I learned to sense fights minutes before the first punch was thrown. I could also tell when my ass was going to get kicked minutes before it happened and was usually able to prevent my predicted beating. Usually.

But now, in the age of my sobriety, I'm hyper-hyper aware of my surroundings. In a crowd of strangers, as I found myself in a wedding I recently performed, I couldn't remember anyone's name five seconds after I was introduced to them. I could, however, tell you from which coffee decanter they filled their coffee cup, who was married to whom, when the photographer changed the lens... etc.

I sensed that an acquaintance was looking at me with a sense of skepticism. She had once been a smiling,  hugging overtly but sincerely friendly friend of a friend. Now, she looked at me like a white woman alone in an elevator on which a black man just entered: Smiling while she clutches her purse and backs away into the corner.

You see, I say a lot of things. If something strikes me as funny, I'll immediately spin it into a joke. Often, I don't take into account the company in which I'm in earshot as I spew forth some sort of goochified wit. I don't even keep track of what I say other than posting it on Twitter. I mean, I consider myself a writer and if my publishing options over the years has whittled down to this website, I still want the review board of "anyone with a Twitter/Facebook account" to hold me accountable. It's a nervous habit. If you see me in a social setting and I'm shotgunning attempts at humor, it's because I'm likely wading in an ocean of anxiety with the arm floaty of my attempts of comedy keeping me afloat..

I discussed this at anxious paranoid length with my friend, the gateway into this social circle. I realized that I was near obsessing over the approval of some guy's wife. I back tracked and started explaining why I was so concerned about the perceived loss of approval by a distant acquaintance. I had to figure it out for myself as I simultaneously figured it out for her.

When I was drinking, I was just as more obnoxious and funny. I would take a table full of people and try to get them laughing. If they're laughing, they can't notice I'm fat, or question my career choices, or pick apart my personality flaws. If someone doesn't care for me after one of those sessions, I can excuse such disapproval as a byproduct of my being drunk. They don't necessarily dislike me. Rather, they don't necessarily like how I acted when I was drunk.

Drinking is fantastic. There are so many wonderful things.  It gives buffer between the world and your real self.