If I was a movie character I would be Rambo, no doubt.
The only way I can feel relaxed around men is when they are threatening to kill me.
Just today someone who had previously said he would curb stomp me then put me out of my misery with a bullet to the brain stem invited me for tacos.
I don’t enjoy being treated poorly but it makes me feel safe. I know what is expected of me. Compliance. In other contexts I don’t know how to function and start to panic. Like really panic.
First my kidneys seize up, then my brain shuts down. This isn’t good in social contexts because healthy people expect you to have a brain. They want you to be Captain of your Ship.
And I’m trying to rewire my brain into Captain Consciousness. But right now it freezes, scans for threats, monitors emotions & tries to glean the wills of other people so they can be followed. Cause it’s seized up in terror, especially around men and the nicer they are the worse the terror gets.
Nice guys feel like a dark fun house where the room is empty and silent and you don’t know which wall the clown is going to come busting through. The longer you have to wait, the worse the terror grows. Pins and needles until finally the clown pops to attack you. Now you can release a blood curdling scream and feel the pain of getting bludgeoned in the head, but regardless being attacked by a clown beats waiting to get attacked by one.
If I’m around a nice guy for extended periods of time, I become unable to move afterwards due to prolonged anxiety. First the kidneys seize, then the brains freeze, then the limbs. This state can last for hours or a day.
And its impossible to relax in his presence. Much less do the things expected of a modern woman like having a will and voice of your own. But these expectations are ridiculous. Can a man know what flavor of ice cream he wants while staring into the eyes of a cobra and trying to sway in just the right way to appease him? He wants whatever flavor the cobra wants because he is the cobra’s little bitch. Every human is a little bitch when they’re waiting for clowns to pop.
Nice guys feel like a tightrope stretched over the Grand Canyon. You know you’re going to make a misstep. Why not plunge to your death now and get it over with?
Missteps are certain because you don’t know the rules. They aren’t the rules you are used to, where doing & saying as little as possible is gold star behavior. Nice guys are fucking demanding. They want you to know your mind, express your mind, run your own business, be a cowgirl. Don’t take shit from no one, have a personality and know how to make your jeep jump like a frog.
Assholes only need you to not contradict them. Let them yell at you without defending yourself. Go into deep freeze mode so you can absorb quantities of anger without getting angry back. Blur out your brain so words wash over you like water. This is my skill set. But nice guys don’t value these skills. Good luck pleasing them.
And when you add to this the fact that the whole nice guy thing is probably an act and a woman eating lizard is going to bust out of his skin at any moment, you can see why they jack up my anxiety.
However, I am actively training my brain to be more positive. To believe in good things & seek them out. Because we won’t know how magical life is unless we look for magic & that all starts with believing. Or at least being open.
Yes, yes, my kidneys say, but also listen to this rhyme I just wrote!
What is a man but a clown in the dark?
Who clown clubs your head then jerks off in a park?