I want to talk about my social anxiety disorder. I know I’ve made jokes and constantly kid around about it, but its gotten to the point where doctors have pretty much stopped trying to see if something is wrong with my stomach and resigned themselves to the fact that its something in my mental workup thats making me feel nauseous for inexplicable reasons, at inexplicable times, but especially under stress and around people.
One, because it means there’s no instant cure, there’s no stomach ulcer or something that could be removed and I could function again.
Two, it comes with some stigmas (and maybe these are all just my own) that I worry might lesson my ability to be taken seriously. “Walk it off” because people don’t understand how hard it is. “Its all in your head” often means “you are too mentally weak to overcome this.” I like to think I am smart, that my best and most important feature is my ability to think, my love of learning, my constant need to better myself through gained knowledge. So anything that leads people to think I have any decreased mental capacity frustrates me. Also, I don’t really want to have to take medicine for this, for the same reason I’ve never used drugs: I hate the idea of my mind not being all there. But, the fact remains that I need medicine, that I can’t just walk it off, and that you should not count this against me, please.
Three. I don’t really like the idea that something like this would be a cause for….well, the best word for me is “pity”. I don’t want that sort of attention. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or whatever.
So, why even bother talking about it then? Because I want people to understand that I want to hang out! I generally think a lot of people I talk to are cool. For instance: I haven’t been to an Ignite, not because I don’t want to go, but because I just could not handle 600 people in a room, no matter how many of them were Sunny Thaper. I guess its mostly so people know that I don’t hate them, I don’t want to miss birthday parties (Sorry Chuck), I don’t want to miss events that people work really hard on (Sorry Ignite Crew, all the #fn’s & OVO among others.)
Another reason I want to be transparent about this, is because I started Phoenix Design Week. I want to do a lot of things, and I want to do lots of things that have nothing to do with benefiting me. What do I get out of Design Week? I mean really, in the end, do I get paid, do I get anything? No. And I don’t want to. I want to find ways to help the creative community in Phoenix be better. And I can’t do that if I want to throw up when I’m around more than 2 people. My ambitions should not be limited by something like this, and I simply will not let them be anymore. I don’t want to let down the volunteers of Design Week by being less than 100% functioning and capable of leading this thing towards an amazing end. And you know what? Fuck it, I’m not going to let it.