Comfort

We had our 'holiday' dinner out for all of us who work at the Doctor's office a week ago, Wednesday. You may wonder why exactly it took until the middle of January for such an event to occur. It was that the end of the year at the office was pretty damn crazy. Dr. C(mostly) and staff were super busy working to get our office up to the standards of a Government incentive program. There was also a lot of end of the year house keeping that had piled up as the office had started making the switch to an updated and soon to be mandated type of system that needed to be done by January 1st. So, holiday celebrations were put on hold.

I am one of only two boys who work at the office and Dr. O didn't go out with us, so it ended up being me out with eight women. It was the subject of a lot of joking, but I didn't mind, because good company is good company regardless of gender.

The dinner went as it usually does when I'm in a relatively large group*. I say very little, if anything at all. I am very happy to let others dominate conversation. It really was a great time. I haven't laughed so much in quite a while. I would get the occasional, 'poor Michael' when things turned particularly girly.

I already knew that I liked the people I work with, but that night proved to me that I am comfortable with them. I can't eat around just anybody. I'm not insecure about people seeing me eating or anything. I'm just very anxious when I'm out and around people, so I get very nauseated. I have to be very comfortable with the people I'm with to be able to eat much at all and I ate everything before me that night**.

I even have a hard time eating when I go out with my best friends. I've never told them exactly why I don't eat much, but it helps that I'm ridiculously skinny, so they can presume that it's just how I normally eat****. I really would rather they didn't know, because I don't want them to think it's their fault; it's my crazy ass. Here is how going out to dinner with my friends goes for me:

I'm nervous and want to throw up when we enter the restaurant. We get seated and order drinks (not alcohol***** in this scenario). I'm able to talk and do my best to pretend that I don't feel like shit. Food gets ordered and as we wait I start to calm down. I begin to think that I might actually be able to eat enough food for it not to be embarrassing this time. As soon as the food is brought to our table and I can smell the food, the nausea returns much worse than before. It's been so bad that I've excused myself to the bathroom certain that I was going to puke, but alas no puke ever comes. I can rarely stomach more than a few bites. I've paid for an awful lot of uneaten meals.

It is nice to go out to dinner and not feel like that, so that may have been the best part of going out to dinner that night. It was a big +7******* for people I can go out with and feel mostly normal. It doesn't exactly help with the rest of it, but it was something nice. Could you imagine, if I had the courage to, you know, ask a girl out to dinner?

Well, just know that, if I ever have the pleasure to share a meal with any of you who aren't Sarah, I won't be eating much.



I've put the song "Ontario" by No Use For A Name on repeat and I can't make myself stop. I really love that song and can't quite quantify it. I really relate it to "Looking for Alaska" in my mind. It's a pretty song and it's short and if I don't stop it soon it could over take my #1 most played on i Tunes.

Thanks for reading and please comment

-Michael
*Actually, this is how i act in smaller groups as well only it is a lot more awkward.
**This was before I had the Xanax***.
***That bit was entirely for my Sister's and Emma's benefit. I'll be telling you all more about that next week.
****It's not
*****If alcohol is involved, the rest of the paragraph doesn't happen.
******One of the eight people was my Aunt Jane and she was already on the list.

P.S. I put the renaming of the blog thing on the back-burner during my paranoia about being seriously ill, but I'm back to spending time on it. I have a list. I'm not going to share it, but I assure you of it's existence.