Hi, I’m Nervy

Uh, hi. I’m Nervy—nervy, as in, nervous, not as in…you know, like having nerves. Nerves of steel? Because that’s not me at all: having nerves of steel, being bold. No, no, no, that’s not me. I’m a very nervous person. I may not show it, but as soon as I open my mouth, you should be able to tell. I become flustered…very flustered. There’s probably a better word, a word with more oomph behind it, but I can’t think of it. As I did just now, with the lack of a better fitting word than ‘flustered, ’my mind goes blank—test anxiety in every situation. I know what I want to say, but I lose the ability to string words together in a logical…ahh, string (?), as soon as I hear my voice coming out of my face, for everyone to hear, everyone hanging on my thought. I freak out. I regret opening my mouth and wish people could just be happy with the fact that I nod in agreement. Why do they have to expect my input?
In high school, I had a few friends, well friends of friends—like the kind of friends that you don’t hang out with outside of class but you would if either of you wanted to—that understood my condition. Maybe ‘understood’ is the wrong word? More like they pointed it out every time I began to stammer some coerced banter that would go on and on since I never knew if they really got my point and felt like I needed to make myself clear on the original point I began to explain and every other point I wandered off to in the process. And they would tease me, and I would deserve it. They would squawk, “Sam’s nervy, Sam’s nervy!” stressing the two syllables in ‘nervy’ like every toddler-bully singing his teasing one-liners. To be honest, I was actually grateful they put a face to my nerves. It was like it’s taboo to point out that someone’s having trouble communicating because their mind is slowly unlearning social transactions. It actually takes the pressure off when I’m stopped in the midst of my unlearning and the obvious is pointed out. It was like their teasing was actually reassuring me: “We hear you, Sam. We hear that you’re having trouble talking to us, even though it makes no sense at all because we’re not intimidating, at least to anyone else. Take a breath and be reassured that you’re screwing up, hard to follow, losing our attention, but yet we are still here, if for no other reason than to poke fun at your expense.”
It’s absolutely exhausting being a nervous person. My mind’s running a marathon uphill in order to get a mile down the road. It’d be so much easier on me and those that are forced to listen to my stumbling tongue if I was just a fly on the wall, and we would have an understanding that my winged presence was better than a clumsy hornet’s flight around the room. And what’s more, being a nervous person doesn’t just end with awkward speech in every setting, it reaches into every facet of my life. But if it’s okay with you, I’ll stop while I’m only this far behind and save you from the rest of my droning. I really would much rather stop now, or that I never began, than go any farther.

6: On Long Distance Relationships

This particular subject may be difficult for many other people to celebrate; but for me, long distance relationships are a strange breed of good fortune. While I tend to become very close with the few people I form intimate relationships with, our bond builds into a kind of drug. My significant other and I produce a nasty habit of dependency. And as I can only speak for myself, my habit has grown into a controlling fiend.
Dependency leads to low self esteem, compliance issues, among other concerns in the individuals it overwhelms. Individuals with dependency disorders tend to:
• prefer to have someone they trust guide them
• seek advice for everyday decisions
• find themselves in situations where other people have made decisions about important areas in their life
• find it hard to express a different opinion with someone they are close to
• often pretend to agree with others even if they do not
• often need help to get started on a project
• are uncomfortable when you are alone
• are desperate to get into another relationship right away when a close relationship ends
• worry about important people in your life leaving you (en.wikipedia.org)
Treatment for dependency includes “managing distress, improving interpersonal effectiveness, and building skills for affective regulation...the goal of treatment is not independence but autonomy,” (en.wikipedia.org). Individuals with dependency disorders must build strength rather than foster neediness.
Specifically, dependency in my relationships is most effectively and quickly treated with the wondrous healing powers of the increased distance between the two of us. The long distance relationship is a break up in denial. I’m not saying that relationships will always fail when the two parties do not touch or at least see each other on a regular basis, but the mystery of the other party’s actions has an undeniable distress on the union.
Fast forward through the weeks or month(s) of excruciating, lonely pain, and focus on the only celebration in this situation. Long distance relationships force me to get on with my life. I cannot continually hold a white-knuckled, death grip on my cellular phone and wait for my faraway significant other to dial that precious phone call or type that treasured text. My life is happening in the now and in the here, not in the then and in the there. New faces pass my way, just as my significant other is now more open to considering their options in physical replacement partners, someone to fill in the black hole of lonesomeness and self pity. It’s easier to lie, or accept, that I am attached to no one, single, instead of being slapped in the face with the doubtful expression when explaining that I am in a long distance relationship—notorious for never working out. The need to be faithful lessens when I loosen up and allow myself to have fun outside of my previous commitment shackles.
With distance, I am forced to focus on only my life, my own good. There is no way to accurately monitor my significant other. Being freed of the weight of living for two is liberating, after the pain has passed. I begin to see clearly, to think for myself. I’m weightless. Time may indeed make the heart grow fonder, but this is only until the heart is starved by perpetual loneliness; then the more sensible proverb takes hold: out of sight, out of mind. It’s much easier to forget without (constant) reminders.
My long distance relationships are simply used to wean me off of the connection. We both change and grow, more often than not, we grow apart. We develop new friends, new interests and hobbies, and most tenderly new inside jokes that are too difficult to explain to one another. Visits become more of a burden and unwanted time away from my new life. The financial and opportunity cost is no longer worth the awkward encounters. Long distance relationships are the antidote for moving on to new possibilities, to becoming autonomous instead of dependent.
The average distance between two parties in a long distance relationship is 125 miles. They visit an average of 1.5 times a month. Calls are made on average every 2.7 days and last an average of 30 minutes. And the amount of time they expect to be separated on average is 14 months (www. longdistancerelationships .com). The average 14 months of separation may be ended by the two parties moving back together, or more probably ended by their acknowledgment of the break of their connection. In my case, it’s always the latter, and it never takes as long as 14 months.
In a personal writing, from a past long distance relationship finding its end ,I affirmed to my significant other that we were joking ourselves if we stayed attached by the single thread of the façade of commitment: I’m beyond it. I’ve moved past it. It is the past and I have no intension of attempting to revisit it. It is the past and that is where it shall stay. It is something that has crumbled in comparison to the now. What was once thought of to be so great is now looking not so great. The great has surpassed itself. A past excellence was really no such thing because of what is known now. It has over lapped itself—doubling itself yet cancelling what magic it ever once had. And now, even I am over it. Being over it and reaching acceptance, I conclude the only logical next step is for you to get over it as well. And my willingness to suggest this is proof enough that I will have washed my hands of it.
Long distance relationships are my celebrations of a new life.
True, this view on long distance relationships belongs to solely me, an unmarried, unengaged twenty-two year old with no prospects of long lasting belonging to another. Those that are married, or even engaged, are obviously free to have their own opinions. And those meant to be together, even with whatever happens while miles apart, will still be together once united in place.

5: Tall Tale of Hygiene

I impulsively shut my eyes so I can better picture my navigation in this spot where my vision cannot reach. My eyelids are hinged and latched, eyelashes intertwining with their corresponding lower lashes, like a locked door barricading the public realm from my feel-good secret. I cock my head and lean into it with an off center grin. One hand twirls my long shafted tool, all the while pulling it out just to stick it back in me. I can feel my sticky excretion gather around the bulbous end, the portion of my pleasure stick that is the deepest inside me.

Cleaning the inside of my ears with cotton swabs is the most satisfying task in my nighttime hygiene regimen. I save it for last. I brush my hair and pull it up into a high pony tail so no stray strands will interfere with my gyrating toothbrush, but most importantly, so no hairs will become knotted around the cotton swab dowel and ruin the gratification of my ear cleaning with the pin prick pain of being yanked out by the root. I rush through the ritual of splashing my face with the time consuming three step sanitization and refinement formulas employed by my Proactive system. But these preceding hygiene responsibilities are just foreplay. My ears are the vagina of senses; the cotton swab is the dildo of sanitary tools.

Like Xerox for copiers and Kleenex for tissues, Q-tip brand has become the universal household name for every kind of cotton swab. Actually, cotton swabs come in different assortments and qualities. Q-tips are superior to their off brand competition because of their high-quality. Q-tips are made of pure, off white materials: rolled paper pole and a bunch of cotton on either end. Their untainted appearance is like the innocence of a colorless wedding dress, waiting to be soiled by the honeymoon between cotton and ear canal. Each Q-tip is stored like Emperor Qin’s terracotta army—filed shoulder to shoulder in a well awaiting its calls of duty to battle…in this case, earwax. After the job is completed, the Q-tip stays in place to stimulate this sensitive region by tickling the minuscule hair follicles within the ear canal, provoking a toe-flexing enjoyment. More than two shakes classifies as playing with yourself. Their imitators try to disguise their faulty manufacturing by teasing users with flashy colors on their smooth, glossy plastic rods—the sluts of cotton swabs.

The purity of the Q-tip last only a few moments. And without its wholesomeness, it’s useless and is disposed of at once. Thankfully, once again like the terracotta soldiers, another is in line to take its predecessor’s post. There is no handkerchief parallel to the Q-tip; there are no reusable ear cleaners. Though each Q-tip is a virgin, it’s cursed to be a one-night-stand. And though its action maybe orgasmic, it’s infamous as a minute man.

4: neighbors and strangers

I relax on my roommate’s hand-me-down stained couch and listen to the evenly spaced thuds growing in volume just outside my apartment door. Someone is climbing the stairs, step by step, to get to the second floor apartments in my complex. Because of the positioning of the stairs and my apartment unit in respect to other stairwells around the complex, the only reason anyone would ascend the stairs outside my door would be to get into my apartment or my next door neighbor’s unit. These stairs have been relatively silent for the year that I’ve lived here. My roommate keeps a very busy schedule on campus and usually comes home after I’m tucked under my sheets, and she leaves in the morning before my afternoon alarm clock chimes—so I rarely hear her coming or going.
But the stairs have been under considerable more activity in the past few weeks. It’s obvious that the vacant apartment next door has finally been filled after more than a year of advertising its loneliness. For as much noise as my new neighbors make, I’d think that a family of six had moved in to the two bedroom unit. If this is the case, why haven’t I seen any of my new neighbors? They’re in and out and up and down the stairs more than I come and go. Why haven’t we once run in to each other and had that initial contact of welcoming? I sit on the couch and listen to scurried footfall throughout the day and the sluggish steps at night. I imagine a young mother hurrying her children around during the day, trying to make appointments and run errands while grabbing forgotten paperwork, a quick lunch and afternoon snack, or change of clothes for soccer practice after picking the kids up from school. The husband leaves early and returns late from some job that requires a black, leather briefcase with silver buckles. Their life isn’t too far off from my roommate’s and mine. My roommate stays at “work” all day, returning with bags under her eyes to match the bag on her back packed with accounting papers. I run myself around town picking up groceries, running errands for friends, and changing for track practice while I try to squeeze in a snake at the same time—the child in me still prefers peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese.
The other day, I opened my door into my apartment just as my neighbor opened his to walk out. I rushed inside the isolation of my apartment without thinking. I feel as if too much time has gone by to introduce myself. Had I wanted to make friends with my neighbors, why hadn’t I caught them on the stairs when I heard them descending only a few minutes before I was to leave? Isn’t that the neighborly thing to do? At least I could say hello if I didn’t have time to bake a welcome basket of muffins for our introduction. Where had the neighborly love gone? My parents talk about their childhood running around with neighbor kids and sitting with the old widow in her cottage on the corner while their parents went out for a minute. But I never introduced myself to a neighbor of mine in my life, now that I think about it. I’ve never even seen my neighbors at my parent’s home. I never went around the dorm hallways to see who I lived next to. I avoid the people in my apartment complex in fear of starting an awkward conversation I can’t get out of; and heaven forbid they ask me for a favor, a cup of sugar? I’m scared of the strangers I live closest to. But they’re not strangers at all. I know more about their lives by listening through the thin sheet of plaster that separates our living quarters than my parents know about my daily schedule.
Yet I sit here on my roommate’s stained couch, listening to the thudding footfall climbing and falling down the steps outside. I’d like to think that I would come to their assistance if I heard a disturbance, but aren’t we supposed to mind our own business?