Into the void...

2002-08-08

3:05 p.m.

Somewhere, I remembering reading that one could compare anxiety to an adrenaline rush. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I read that, but I do remember thinking at first that it sounded odd because I’ve always thought of adrenaline rushes as good things. Then I thought about it and realized that anxiety really CAN be a lot like adrenaline rushes, and it’s precisely those adrenaline rushes that cause me so much trouble, particularly considering that any LACK of said adrenaline rushes leaves me in an insuperable state of ennui.

Essentially, then, the problem lies in the fact that the adrenaline rushes can be considered good sometimes, but, like any drug, adrenaline loses the value it once had and becomes something altogether harmful. Once you’ve experienced too much adrenaline, you’ve already become addicted. Try as you may to recapture the pulsating pleasures of your younger days of adrenaline-pumping excitement, you’re invariably left stumbling through darkness wondering why it never seems to be enough anymore. From that stage, adrenaline becomes your worst enemy by inviting itself along regardless of where you are and what you’re doing, and it somehow knows when it can be most inappropriate.

Yesterday, Rob came to interview for a job in my office. While he was here, I was pacing back and forth the whole time wondering how his interview was going and being nervous for him, even though I knew he was nervous enough for both of us. After he left, the woman who interviewed him came to talk to me about how he’d done, and, while she was talking to me, she kept saying how wonderful he was, how well he did, and how much she’s thinking she may hire him.

For some reason that I can’t explain, she was making me excruciatingly nervous. It may have been partially because she was standing really close to me in my cube so no one else would hear what she was saying and partially because what she was saying was making me feel…something. Whatever it was, the whole time she was talking, I felt like I was getting warmer and warmer and blushing like someone had just caught me with my pants down. When she left, I looked down, and my entire chest was covered in hives – bright red, painfully pulsating hives arisen from an overabundance of adrenaline.

There’s no reason on Earth why I should’ve been nervous.

The reaction was, I’m sure, partly explainable by the fact that I was all at once happy for Rob, worried for Rob, concerned that someone else may get the job, uncomfortable with her close proximity to my person, embarrassed by her knowledge of a little bit of my personal life, and impatient to run home to tell Rob everything. All those emotions fumbling around in the same spot at the same time can’t possibly bode well for anxiety.

I suppose it did have something to do with too much adrenaline.

Saying that, though, makes it all sound just a little too simple. It sounds a little too much like comparing depression with sadness. It’s all you can say to make your average person understand, but it’s not nearly enough to make them understand.

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