A Defense Celebration Of My Neuroses
Let him who is without anxiety cast the first stone.
Radical Agnes: You’re not neurotic, Jenny.
Jenny Donkey: Yes I am. But who isn’t?
The Sisterhood: He’s extremely neurotic.
My neuroses came under attack the other night, the poor dears, in an ambush by a recent date. The question he posed almost rendered me speechless: “Don’t take this the wrong way but why do women have so much more anxiety than men?” I prefer the term neuroses myself. I felt incredibly defensive after he asked me that as though he had slapped me in the face.
I know I’m neurotic; evidence has been pushing itself toward that verdict for some time now. I walk in a hurry, stiff and like I had to be somewhere five minutes before. When jaywalking, I get nervous when a car is approaching from three blocks away where there’s no possible way it can hit me. If I’m a stranger at a party, I tend to bulldoze my way through the various social circles leaving people blindsided in the wake of Hurricane Jenny. I can’t help myself most of the time.
After What’sHisName pointed out how anxious I was, I began to notice just how numerous my ticks are. What’s worse, I began to call myself out on them every time I noticed myself acting a little crazy. “Uh oh,” I declared to him as I hunched my shoulders defensively in preparation for my bob through a sea of hipsters on both Ossington and Queen Streets. “Anxiety.” I’m anxious in those situations because I’m small and drunk people are careless with their blazing cigarettes and behemoth bodies. I hate crowds because I get hurt in them; this aversion, I suppose, is part of what makes me neurotic. That and the fact that I think people I pass outside the bars late at night are all laughing at me.
Needless to say, I felt like a complete head case around my date for the rest of our evening together and nothing kills intimacy quite like the psychological manifestation of an offhand comment. Because I’m a neurotic, it’s mostly all in my head anyway.
The next evening I attended Caro’s 3 Days of Meat Party and indulged my neuroses with people who have known and loved me for longer than they haven’t. We had a giggle over our recent spate of bad luck with the gentlemen, our un-/underemployment, meat and vegetables, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie as perfect complements to a summertime barbeque and the distribution of the African population by country throughout the city. The vino tinto flowed freely and after disclosing the details of my night of disaster, my kindred spirits talked me down from the proverbial ledge. Cackles erupted; it took 24 hours but I was in full celebration of all my foibles again.
“I’m sooooo drunk, Koko.”
“I noticed.”
I don’t ever want to feel that I am a liability. What a horrible way to go through life. I make myself laugh just the way I am and that is enough. What I need is to find someone whose idiosyncrasies go with mine. I have faith that he exists and that the Universe will deliver him. Before she does, however, I must learn never to abandon my instincts vis-à-vis les hommes endommagés and to stop inviting them into my home. God forbid, they might judge my cluttered kitchen counter, my barren white walls, my taste in music or the undusted spider webs that hang in the corners and I can’t have that, can I?
