Splash. The top of my head breaks through the surface of the water. Water gushes down my skin. I gasp and take in a deep gulp of breath. My first bit of oxygen for a long time. It has been a long swim, longer than I can imagine. I must have been swimming, or actually nearly drowning, for more than a year: combining a more-than-fulltime job with a serious relationship and desperate writing aspirations. Now it’s finally over. The three of them fought and quarrelled, but eventually the only deserving loser admitted its defeat.
To refrain from poetic difficulties for a second: I am now happily unemployed and ready to give the two winners, my boyfriend and my yet non existent writing career, my best. But before I begin with any of those, I’m ready to reunite with all my friends I’ve lost touch with in the past year.
I phone Maia to arrange a get together, but she answers my call in an unfriendly tone. The fact that she is on holiday in Paris, probably wants to keep her cell phone costs as low as possible and apparently isn’t having a good time at all could probably count as well. Nevertheless, it forces me to ponder about my friendships.
I haven’t seen many of them lately. Come to think of it, nearly all my social energy has been put in my family, Matt’s family and Matt’s friends. What about my own friends? I hesitate to dial another number of one of those friends, realising I haven’t spoken to any of them for ages and feel like I need a better excuse than unemployment to suddenly reappear in their lives. So my cell phone lies on my desk just as unemployed as its owner and my mind wanders off to that intriguing post exertion fatigue and huge amount of water again.
After I’ve recaptured a decent pace of breathing I finally fully open my eyes to see where I am. I’m standing in an ocean. Standing, so I must be near a shore. Indeed, in front of me there’s an island. A safe spot after all that time I’d been nearly drowning. But when I take a closer look I realise: the island is deserted…
Could I have lost more in the past year than my motivation to work for a commercial company and my health? Could constantly living on the edge of a burn out have resulted in a massive genocide of the people called Friends? How could this have happened without me knowing?
I believe people can react in two ways when they are stressed out: they explode or implode. Exploders need social contacts to relief their stress. They go to parties, clubs and friends’ homes to forget about their problems and the approaching doom of a burn out. Imploders on the other hand have a tendency to hide away in their houses when they’re overly busy, hoping that one day it will all just have stopped, like waiting out an immense hurricane. Hoping that suddenly it’s all over and quiet again.
I tend to implode. I tend to crawl into a little ball near the radiator, plaid around me, swallowing away tears and letting the dry warmth of the heating system comfort me. As for social skills, when stressed out I only engage in the social events I really can’t avoid, much to displeasure of Matt who’s more of an exploder.
Having the social skills of a bug I… No wait, I can’t slag myself off here. Having the social skills of an imploder apparently left my island quite derelict. What am I supposed to do next? My first reaction is to turn around and dive right back in. But remembering the sharks and pirates that have haunted me for so long I realise I can’t reinstate losing myself in work again. I have to explore the island. But I don’t know where to begin…
I walk a few yards on the beach, the hot sand slipping through my toes. Then suddenly my right foot bumps into something square and small. I reach down and find a little, pink booklet. It’s my address book!
I know I can’t escape now. I have to do this. I make a list of all my true friends and either call or email them, explaining what I’ve been doing lately and asking them to get together to catch up. Next time I’m stressed out (because as a workaholic I know that sometime in the nearby future I will) I’ll be swimming together with friends, not drowning solitarily.
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Hear hear! :D
Left by Maia on Monday, September 10th, 2007