Anxious Item #2 e-mail

I remember when I first got the Internet. I was 12 and I was so freaking excited to figure out all the wonders the computer held in store for me. After a week I figured out that it was mostly porn and Geocities (RIP) sites about TV shows.

My Internet plan came with an IRC application and I became addicted. Real time chat was where it was at, baby! I became an op in a room and I knew all the codes to be able to type in every color. It was all I really did. I came home from school, did my homework, logged on to IRC and chatted with strangers in Germany until it was bedtime.

I don't remember when my IRC usage dropped off, I think it may have been around the time I entered high school. I had a falling out with my biggest friend IRL and we used to IRC together. When we got into a huge fight she talked shit about me on the Internet. I know, 14 year old girls using the Internet as a social weapon, who would have thunk it?

Anyway, this brings me to the form of communication we were left with in those pre-social networking days, e-mail. To this day, a full 11 years after my love affair with IRC ended, I am a shitty e-mail correspondent. I would rather have a face to face conversation than try to think of what to type out that wouldn't sound stupid or contrived.

When I get a nice, thoughtful e-mail I am paralyzed for a response. I want to type something that would make the receiver laugh, cry, and wet their pants all at the same time. I want to move the heavens and earth with my casual yet meaningful prose style. I want to be able to convey my deepest feelings and heartfelt wonder of life.

But mostly my replies are "Ok, thanks. See you later."

I don't know what my problem is with writing e-mails. I have Gmail and they say it is supposed to be like having a conversation, but I just can't get think of it like that. I get a nice note from someone who cares and I just can't bring myself to write a nice note back.

As for calling them, that is a whole different anxiety post.

Anxious Item #1 Subway Vampires

I would like to preface this with the fact that I am not afraid of the subway.

Living near Boston I use the subway, called the T, quite a bit. Red line, Orange line, Green line...all the colors of the filthy Boston rainbow are familiar to me. I even know the buskers, like that Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator who sings along to his CDs or scratchy throated bum who once sang the dog version of Jingle Bells. My ass has never been grabbed nor have I ever been robbed.

But I have small panic attacks on the subway sometimes. You know when you're on the train and you're zipping along in the black tunnels under the city and all of a sudden the train stops? You're stuck in an inky tunnel and you can't even see the walls from the smudged windows. Immediately when this happens my brain goes straight to a vampire attack.

It's not logical, but there it is. My brain seems to think that subway tunnels are the perfect place for vampires to chill out and wait for a subway car to come along so they can rip it open like a Twinkie wrapper and get the gooey filling inside.

Whenever the train slows down without a station in sight my heart starts pounding a bit harder and it becomes difficult to take a breath. Again, I know that there being a vampire attack on the subway is illogical and kind of dumb, but I just can't seem to help it.

I have been in and out of therapy for a few years now. I have lots of things, some serious, some funny, which make me have anxiety attacks. I wanted to create this blog to develop my writing and share some of these things with the blog reading public.

Because you all know reading about other people's neuroses make you feel better about your own.