"Swallowing Frogs" and Coping with it

I told Sam about my social problems, and he told me that I need to 'swallow the frog', which means I have to do the hardest things first. (Personally, I prefer the term 'biting the bullet' because frogs? what the hell? Where does that even come from?)

I need to do things that I find difficult first, like calling my family or talking to people in the house. In a sense Sam is right, I do need to 'swallow the frog'.

 Yet when Sam describes what I need to do, I just can't see myself doing it. I can't see myself performing the most basic of social interactions.... At the gym, when you do burpees first, you are not alone. You suffer with others, with a similar dread, and that can be the difference between doing it and not.

Sam is a hypocrite. The friends' in the house will love Sam no matter what. My relationship with the house is more artificial. I need to 'get along'. If I don't 'get along', I risk coming home to people who hate me.

If they hate me, what am I going to do? If I move out, I lose my love life. If I stay, I have the constant torment of being disliked.

In my opinion, strong indifference is better than hate. So when confrontation might arise, I avoid interacting altogether.

It's not a good system for developing friendships. Friendships are about trust, risk and honesty. And in the house, with the stakes so high, I can't seem to develop that sense of self-entitlement to engage in disputes.

When I'm around people I'm more comfortable with, I love arguing. For a person who doesn't care to defend herself, it's kind of a weird trait. I suppose, I like to play 'fight', but when the 'fighting' gets too real, I'd rather not. (unless it's someone I despise, which is rare)

I went to Char's birthday party, even though, I knew it was a bad idea.

I tend to drink too much, and I definitely could hear in the back of my mind, Char accusing me of hoarding liquor.

 It's certainly true. I do drink too much at parties, but it's mostly because I feel nervous. If you put water in my hands at parties, I'll drink insane amounts of water.(My record is 12 glasses of water) I tend to want to repetitively do something without drawing attention to myself.

Char likes to micro-manage, and I find his micro-management annoying. In the house, when it is someone's birthday, you are supposed to treat them like a god. And during Char's party, he was directing me where to sit in relation to other people. At first he ordered me to sit closer, and then later on, he ordered me to sit farther away.

By the time he ordered me to sit farther away, I was too drunk to control my emotions, and much to my dismay, I started sobbing in the corner. So I left, went to a nearby bar, and drank until I was numb.

By accident, I regrouped with the party. Feeling excessively drunker, I was indifferent to the emotions I had before. And thus, I was able to hang out with the group and go home.

At that party, there was a lesson. If I can't find a place to displace or express my emotions, I need some form of coping mechanism. Liquor is a coping mechanism. It did exactly what I wanted it to do.......but it's not healthy.

In that situation, maybe I should have talked back to Char. However, I don't think that would have earned me friends.

Or maybe not going to the party was a better choice? Though that does not earn me friends either.

When Sam says I should 'swallow the frog', he is right. However, I don't see how I can do these things without a mechanism for coping. Liquor works. It dissipates centralized thinking. A good friendship outside of the house can do that job, but I don't have that kind of relationship yet.

It would be nice if I could express myself in controlled bursts. When Char was managing my seating arrangement, he might not have known he was upsetting me. If I said earlier, before emotions got excessive, 'that I prefer to sit where I want', maybe Char would have respected that. Who knows?

Maybe I need friends outside the house? I don't know.

I just know that when my social interactions go badly, I break every single time.