Stress. Generally.

I guess I don't deal well with stress. On the face of it, that's actually very counter-intuitive for most people who know me, as externally stress doesn't phase me. In fact, the more I read and understand, the more obvious it becomes that a 'normal' reaction to stress for me would be a very healthy sign. It would be a way to discharge the emotions. That's what normal people do, I understand. It doesn't much matter how they do it - whether they kick and scream, go manic, get drunk, whatever - they're discharging it.

I don't do that, because I don't have a mechanism to. Or maybe I do, but it's been represssed. Who knows.

What I do is outwardly nothing at all, or close to. I just absorb whatever the world throws at me, and I have a huge capacity. So I am a model of serenity in the face of stress. What I actually do is tend to dissociate. In fact, it works like this: people think they know me, but what they think they know is just a mask. My life is lived from inside one of the masks from classical Greek theatre - I can see the inside of it, and I look out on the world through the eyeholes. But don't ever be fooled into thinking you can get to know the person behind the mask, because if you ever prise it away, all you'll find underneath is another mask.



Haha! You can't trap me so easily, you stupid people. Because inside that mask is another, and another. And eventually, there's nothing. And I am watching from a vantage point half a metre above, behind and to the right of my right shoulder. I am, of course, invisible. I am an invisible, disembodied, emotionless entity, doomed to drive a meat robot by remote control for everyone else's amusement. Trying to pick a reaction that will be approriate to the situation, plan a course, but all the while without a map or a set of rules.

Most of the time, it's okay because one can infer the simpler rules. It's just when things get emotionally stressful it sometimes goes a bit wonky, because other people just don't seem to respond in any kind of predictable way. Or at least not one I can make sense of.