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Bursting my Bubble?

8 years ago2,725 words

It's been a relatively eventful week, the last for probably a while... I went for another checkup about my brain tumour, and also tried facing some weird fears... which put a lot of things into perspective and made me aware of how small and distorted my psychological bubble has become lately (and how valuable relationships are, again).

First, the brain tumour thing. I had to go for a scan at 9am, and it took three hours on trains to get to the hospital, so I had to wake up around 5am. Which was fun. Then I had to wait around after the scan until 3pm to find out the results... which were thankfully "it's mostly the same". Oddly it seemed the tumour has changed shape but not overall size? I didn't know that was a thing that could happen, but apparently it is. It means I can continue putting off surgery and going on with life.

Which was sort of disappointing, actually. I'd been somewhat hoping it'd be bad, tragic news - say, that I'd be told I couldn't delay the surgery anymore or even that it'd become inoperable and I had only a few months to live - so then I could use it as an 'excuse' to commit suicide, which I've been thinking about every day for a few years now. I'd spent much of the night before rehearsing what I'd write in my suicide note, thinking how I might do it. I've never got so far as to attempt anything before, but... well, anyway, the thought that I 'had' to keep on living was one that felt like an awful weight, a burden, a chore. It should have been a relief to hear the not-terrible news, but no.

I was however accompanied by my one friend on that long trip, for which I'm extremely grateful. I mean, she woke up at some stupid hour in the morning and accompanied me all day to the hospital - not something fun at all - and she didn't have to do any of that. She says any friend would do the same, but maybe I'm just not used to having actual good friends. I mean, I'm sure I'm not. It turned what could have been a day of drudgery and despair into something almost fun, an adventure, and having her there with me made everything so much less frightening. I mean, I was scared while waiting to hear the results - how could I not be, even if I wanted to die? - but she sat with me and held my hand, and little things like that are both so alien and so incredibly valuable to me.

I also spent the majority of yesterday with her, as it was our final time to see each other before she goes home for the summer... before we go to the Korean summer school together in about a month, anyway. I wanted to use the opportunity to try and overcome some of the fears that have been holding me back, particularly my aversion to Facebook and the feelings of being 'unlovable' that prevent me from trying dating sites.

I've got a Facebook account, but I've avoided it for years because of fear. It isn't that I'm scared about something on the site, or of others' judgement or anything. Rather, it's literally painful to see how well-connected other people are compared to me; it makes me feel left out, defective, unfortunate, lonely.

There was a psychological experiment (which I may have mentioned before) where participants were put in an fMRI scanner, and told that a couple of other participants were in other scanners. They had buttons that they could use to pass a virtual ball to one of these other participants, and they could see on a screen who had the ball and who they were passing it to. At first, the ball was passed fairly evenly between all three participants, but after a while, the other two (which were actually just a computer program) began passing it back and forth between each other but never to the actual human participant. The fMRI scans showed that this led to activation of brain regions associated with physical pain (the cingulate cortex, I think? I can't remember); it literally hurt to be left out.

I feel like that all the time. In pain about being left out. Facebook would exacerbate it, or so I thought; seeing others' shared comments and webs of connections would be no different to watching that virtual ball being tossed between the other participants in that experiment. And it is true that browsing social media does intensify depressive feelings in those who are lonely or prone to negative evaluation and social comparison; it seems people only really benefit from sites like Facebook if they use them to augment fulfilling connections instead of as a substitute for them.

Facebook is used heavily by the students here though, and I missed out on a lot because I was scared to look at it. In particular, it seems that the closer I get to someone, the more it hurts to see their interactions with others, so I was especially scared of seeing my friend's profile and all her posts and photos of good times shared with her boyfriend.

But I knew I couldn't just hide away from it forever... I was only making my problems worse by not facing the fear. On too many occasions over the last two years, I came to this realisation, and felt that I should actually just look at my Facebook feed and be with the feelings that arose, use mindfulness techniques, coping mechanisms, emotional regulation, things like that... But I could never motivate myself to do it. The aversion was always too strong.

I thought though that if I asked my friend to show me her profile in person, to go through all her posts in front of me and tell me about the stories behind them, then I'd feel more like I was 'included' in them, and would be less hurt, left out. It was a profoundly weird thing to even ask, I felt - I mean, how many other people on the planet would be scared of this site that so many people use for fun many times a day? - but she seemed willing to do it, and we did.

It did hurt, quite a bit. Her life hasn't been an absolutely amazing one or anything, but nor has it been bad, and there were quite a few posts of her expressing love for her amazing boyfriend (who's the sort of person I'm not and who I doubt I'd get along with), or bonding with her family members, or things like that. Little bits of things have stuck like jealous knives, bleeding resentment into my mind. But I'm also happy for her. I mostly just sat there saying little while she went through her whole profile, talking, explaining, obviously aware of how I'd feel about some things and nervous about it... I didn't want her to feel bad or guilty about being luckier than I am, but there were a lot of things that were difficult for me to see because I've avoided them for so long, built up these huge, absurd mental beasts and barriers around them which I'm aware are ridiculous but which were also quite potent.

Anyway, we finished going through her profile, and she hugged me at length... So many other people would have just been irritated at me for having such fears at all, or unwilling to spend their time doing something so weird and not 'fun' with me, or they would have got angry at me, perhaps, for being sulky and weird at the end of it. So I can't really put into words how grateful I am to have someone like this now, after a life spent so without proper social support. It makes me think of how many of my problems I just wouldn't have if I'd had someone there to prevent them from growing to the extent they have in the first place... It isn't that I need someone to constantly hold my hand like an invalid, but just being around another person switches my mind into such a different state, a better one. The loving company of another can banish so many mental beasts.

Not all though, sadly. Depression and intense feelings of "who would want me anyway?" prevented me from making any dating site profiles, but I suppose it's one step at a time.

I admire my friend a lot, but it does hurt to know that she is 'just' a friend. I long ago abandoned any hopes of us being in a romantic relationship ever (I'm not what she'd want anyway; I'm much worse of a catch than what she already has, plus I don't want her to have to endure the pain of losing someone she loves), but I do get cut up thinking that maybe I'll never find someone I can be in a relationship with who has as admirable and appealing traits as she does. I imagine a lot of people have been trapped in this sort of psychological position, though. It hurts. I always used to envy the 'nice guys' who at least had female friends even if they were always 'friendzoned', but now I can understand what they so bitterly complained about, I suppose. It isn't pleasant knowing you'd happily capital-L Love someone who'd only ever want to small-l love you at best. Reinforces the ideas that you lack desirable traits, creates resentment about the traits of others who seem to 'succeed' where you don't.

But I suppose it's just something those of us in this kind of position have to find some way to accept. Put others' happiness first, redirect our hearts elsewhere. And I do do that. Like I said, I'd never expect to actually be in a relationship with her. I just won't pretend it doesn't hurt to feel that I've found "my person", but that I have to still keep looking because of reasons like circumstance, her fortune, my undesirability.

Looking at Facebook hurt, but it was very eye-opening in its mundanity. I'd built so many mental constructs about the world that made mountains of molehills, made everything threatening, a source of fear and pain. I assumed everyone was having perfect, wonderful lives, that everyone was really good-looking except me, that looking at photos of happy people would sear my mind with agony... But once I got past the initial fear barrier and actually saw the perfectly ordinary lives that people have, it left a sort of "oh" feeling. "Is that it?" It made me feel embarrassed that I'd ever built things up so much in my mind, but I suppose that's how these things tend to go. It won't be as threatening to look at in future, though I still feel I need to do some desensitisation. I've been working on that today, checking my feed every so often not out of pleasure, but with the hope of growth.

Also, my friend and I hugged a lot yesterday, which feels sad to mention because it's so... naive, so innocent compared to all the sex and intimacy other people get to enjoy freely and relatively often, and yet to me it actually seems significant. Through my teenage years, the idea of hugging a girl was a distant dream, a fantasy; I was a sad recluse who had no opportunities to interact with the opposite sex, even as friends. I hugged and did much more with my one girlfriend, but that was ages ago, and then for years it was back to complete deprivation of physical contact. So now I savour the few hugs I have with my friend, and when she's more willing to be cuddly - as she was yesterday - I do cling to those experiences mentally and probably get a lot more out of them than other people - who've always had them as a common part of their life - might. I suppose that's one of the only 'good' things about deprivation; things taste so much sweeter when they're rare treats.

But I also found myself thinking while hugging or cuddling with her "this is nice... but it'll be over soon, it won't last". And then it was over, it didn't last, and I was left feeling empty, thinking "is that it?". Sex isn't a part of my life, but I often long for it to be - I feel that if it were, so many of my issues would dissolve (there's truth in the irritating line "you need to get laid [to be less grumpy]") - but my inner reactions to this relatively minor physical intimacy did make me question that belief. Maybe sex would be nice, but it wouldn't last forever. It'd be over soon (probably very soon knowing my inexperience), and... then what? It even made me question whether being in a relationship would be of any help at all.

Buddhists (and mindfulness evangelists) speak of living in the moment, of dropping the reliance on attachments in the real world - such as desires or relationships - to find inner peace which doesn't depend on anything fleeting. I can understand the wisdom of that, and it did work for me for a time, when I tried to practise it. I remember likening the bliss it brings to the difference between lighting campfires to shed light on a world covered by dark clouds (which you'd need kindling for and which would need to be constantly relit when they went out), and clearing away those dark clouds so the uninterrupted light of the sun could shine down much more widely. Desperate distraction versus an atmosphere of calm. It does sound like a beautiful and useful outlook to develop.

And yet I feel that the kind of pleasure I get from the company of this 'just a friend' is on such a different, higher level than that 'inner peace' that I wouldn't even want to exchange this for that. Sure, the campfires might not last, and they might even burn, but their heat gives a kind of hot tingling that that distant sun just doesn't. Or something. I remember a story about some celibate Buddhist monk (maybe the Dalai Lama or something) being asked if he would like to have sex and experience an orgasm, to which he replied that meditation was like a constant orgasm, so why would he exchange that for something so messy and brief? It just made me think that only someone who's never had sex would say such a thing. It's about far more than just the physical thrill. Says I, from very, very limited experience. Maybe my own thoughts about that are distorted in the same way that the ones about Facebook were? I wonder.

But yes, Facebook. Now that I've learned that it's not as scary as I thought, perhaps that's led to a sort of shift in my mind. I felt like I was a bit less alien while viewing my friend's profile... Like I was seeing a glimpse into the world I've avoided for so long by hiding away in my shrinking bubble. I know I'm a psychological mess, and I do really want to die... But facing these things head on is the only way to get through them, even if it hurts to do so. Jumping through walls of fire.

It does make me appreciate the incredible value of the people we have in our lives, though. If there's nothing else of any value I've learned in life, at least I've learned that. That life is all about the connections we share with others. That it isn't worth living without them. It's so hard to live without love, in many senses of those words. So if you're lucky to have people you love, cherish every moment you have with them, good or bad. Think about how you'd feel if they were gone, and appreciate that they're not. Tell them that you love them. Don't regret that you didn't if there comes a time when you can't. And if you have a good partner, be grateful, because you're one of the luckiest people in the world.