Warning:
If you are a girl under 25, or a girl over 25 with the sensibilities and/or emotional maturity of a girl under 25, this post will likely offend and affront you so please read on with caution as no amount of righteous commentating will have any effect on my opinions or, I suspect, the opinions of other women my age. Yes, yes, we know that there are a paltry few of you out there who really and truly may not fit this stereotyped roundup and branding, rest easy. You may keep your outrage. This is observational only and frankly we’ve got 10+ years on ya, so the potential that we may have ‘observed’ more than you have in our time is quite high.
As young girls will sometimes do, I spent a good portion of my late teens and early twenties being a bit of an emotionally overwrought batshitcrazy ‘romantic’. Whenever I have a chance to speak to girls of this age range, I am never surprised by the fact that this state of boycrazynutbagism (BCN) is still rampant. Of course, we ladies of a certain age understand the inevitability of the profuse and passion-filled denial of their, even temporary, residence in this ‘greymushed’ state. They are all grown up. Just as we were… wink, snort. (While I am woefully unfamiliar with the emotional tribulations of boys and men, if you have insight into similar types of suffering/disorders that afflict the males of the species please feel free to share this information with me as any areas of common ground between the two can only be beneficial.)
In the early onset of my affliction with BCN, I presented with restlessness, insomnia, bouts of blatant overconfidence interspersed with chronic self-consciousness, alternating uncontrolled fits of crying and rage, and a general moroseness. (The last of which lasted… well… into the present) I was as yet unaware of the type of labeling that could result from such uncontrolled emotional ‘dervishism’. (On a side note, if you have been reading my blog regularly, you may notice that I have a great propensity for making up my own terms. Please feel free to comment, suggest, or ask what the hell kind of cockle-brained meaning I might be assigning them as I am certain it isn’t always obvious.) Once you have been ‘labeled’ in any way, it can become an Odyssean quest to erase the stigma.
A few labels that may be assigned to someone suffering from BCN are: melodramatic, crysack, neurotic, emotional wreck, social doughnut-hole, drama-queen, stalker, and a host of other terms that get progressively worse as your symptoms progress. A main danger of BCN is that it can easily morph into CSBS (crazystalkerbitchsyndrome) which you can recognize by its inherent ability to almost instantly repulse the male of the species (it is believed that in addition to the repellant qualities lurking in the behavioral symptoms there is also a pheromone component to this phenomenon). CSBS is even more dangerous because of its long-term effects, which with time and progression will eventually drive off even the females of the species, who have built in defenses against its symptoms. Both of these disorders also share the unfortunate symptom of complete lack of awareness and/or acceptance of your state, in this way they seem similar to an addiction (hmmmm).
I spent unimaginable amounts of effort and time in what I like to think of as ‘covert ops’. This basically means that I made ridiculous and I am certain, failed, attempts to hide the fact that I was suffering from these afflictions. This type of emphatic denial is a tell-tale sign and one we must be prepared to recognize in those around us, be they loved ones or not, in order to either aid them or hightail it in the opposite direction as though our ass hairs were on fire. I strongly recommend the latter as the former often requires drastic intervention ranging from medication to exorcism.
During the latter years of my tormented dementia (separate from my current years of tormented dementia) I had a long, tumultuous, and mostly immature relationship with a wonderful young man who I met during my first semester of college. He was a good kid; raised up right, mostly emotionally stable, and as different from me as you can imagine. We had our trials and we had our triumphs and I look back fondly if not ruefully. I had many cringe-worthy moments in those days (as I still do, not attempting any type of self-aggrandizing here) but a favorite stems directly from my BCN/CSBS suffering so I will include it here to illustrate the dangers of these disorders.
It happened one weekend that the LOMLATT (loveofmylifeatthetime) had planned to spend the weekend in his hometown without me. Spending the weekend in his hometown which was just a quick hour and a half away was a very usual occurrence, though I was most often included. Unfortunately I occasionally acted like a spoilt child throwing down BF’s (bitch fit) for days in advance of the rare ‘no girlfriend’ trips. Sometimes I would attempt to be a normal human and slap on the BGP’s (big girl panties) and smile and encourage the trip, which is what I did on this occasion. I was however very jealous and suspicious in those days (which I believe leads you into direct contact with assbags who will lie and cheat and hurt you and turn you into a creature that you cannot yourself recognize – but that’s another story) though this particular boy never deserved it, and would eventually almost always work myself up into some kind of frenzy, which I did on this occasion.
I had spent the day in a psychotic cleaning episode, which was how I typically dealt with stress of this sort, and then decided to head out to dinner and drinks with some girlfriends. Somewhere over the course of the next few hours I had convinced myself that the LOMLATT was only home without me in order to facilitate some sort of tryst with a former flame and I was going to deal with this in the most logical manner possible… drive the hour and a half to his hometown at 8:00 at night and confront them with my self-righteous indignation! As it was summer in the mountains, the sun would be up until almost 10pm so I had daylight, a full tank of gas (which in those days cost me somewhere in the area of $20) in Wilma the Wonder Ovary (my super-cool white Subaru sedan), a pack of Camel Lights, and a healthy dose of fury on my side.
I headed out full of adrenaline and red wine (ya, ya, I DO know) with Alanis (dating myself here) blaring on my tinny unbalanced stock speakers, lighting up a cool Camel and throwing back my head to sing. I smoked and sang at the top of my then strong pink lungs for approximately 40 minutes or so feeling powerful and badass, before approaching a roadside bar of the hillbilly variety (IMO) at the base of a curving overpass. Chain-smoking furiously and unapologetically while driving takes some planning and skill, I would pull out a new cig, light it with my old cig, and then toss the old cig out my window with a practiced flick. This way I wasn’t required to use the cigarette lighter which I was convinced was inefficient and also I felt cooler which was of the utmost importance. I rolled down my window to the exactly perfect position, not so much that I get blasted with wind and not so little that I couldn’t get the cig out easily, all the while wailing “and I’m heeeeere… to remind you”. I pulled, lit, and flicked. What I did not realize was that I had inadvertently hit the button to roll down the back window at the same time and as luck would have it (or maybe fate?) the rushing wind sucked my still lit butt back in through the back window where it lodged under my driver’s seat and began to smoke. I fairly quickly realized what was going on, stopped singing, and began a futile reach-around attempt which earned me a set of burned fingertips and a panic attack the likes of which even I was not ready for. I was swerving and swearing and pretty quickly the food-grease, spilt booze, paper, and who knows what else laden carpet had ignited and I was forced to pull over directly opposite the roadside bar where 3 or 4 cars lingered.
Like a lunatic being swarmed by Africanized bees I jumped out and opened the back door bending in my embarrassing ‘daisy dukes’ and frantically pawing for the rogue cig while beating at the carpet fire with my purse, which was the first thing I grabbed in my crazed ransacking of the backseat that was not made of paper or plastic. I did manage to beat the small fire out with my handbag, bursting open every container inside in the process so now I had a gooey plumeria scented menagerie of sloppy wet crap in my purse to boot. I sat down against the back seat huffing and sweating like I had just run a quarter of a mile and lolled my head back at which point I noticed the 5 agog bar patrons standing in the gravel parking area across the street from me sporting expressions of shock, mirth, and I am certain, awe. I looked around me and saw the entire contents of my backseat strewn in the dirt around the open back door; McDonald’s trash, receipts, old cigarette boxes, magazines, newspapers, plastic bags, plastic cups, and other assorted bits. I imagine that those folks enjoyed quite a show and I can only count my blessings that in those days every 8-80 year old didn’t have a smart-phone at the ready to capture and share such impressive moments.
I decided at that point that heading home was probably in my best interest and I did exactly that. I never told anyone the story of the cigarette in my car at the Toston bar until many years later when I finally understood the catharsis of healthy self-deprecation. I have since begun to realize that I find nothing as hilarious as my own chaotic decision-making, apparently this is a view shared by many.
As the years went by I, thankfully, began to see the drawbacks of my emotional situation, the effects on my relationships were disastrous and the effects on my sense of self even more so. I began to metamorphose. Sadly, with my as yet unrecognized mental disorders also present, I went the way of the erratic ‘judgementalist’ with no concept of a middle ground and careened to the other end of the spectrum so spectacularly that I ended up as what some consider robotic and aloof. So removed from emotional attachment that when others (this is quite rare) discover the Lake Vostok-like depths of my emotional reservoir they invariably go into some form of shock, panic, and/or disbelief. This also has not had the most beneficial effects on my life/relationships. I cannot recommend a sojourn into the waters on either side of this continuum and if you find yourself drifting too far in one of those directions please seek immediate attention from a mental health professional, naturopath, witch doctor, or exorcist for THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE!
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