The first day of my Creative Writing class we went around the room describing ourselves.
Most people find this quite a tedious exercise. I however, find it an utter necessity that people understand just how much of a nut job I really am before they engage in any future contact with me.
"Hi, I'm Tom, I write poetry and like to play cards."
"Hi, I'm Fat Bradley, I like cake and I am an utter psychopath."
A similar situation happened with my boyfriend when we first got together.
"Before we go any further, I think you need to know that I'm a little clingy..."
"That's ok, I've been meaning to mention it myself; I get obsessed with things very quickly. And I really do mean obsessed - and not in a cool kind of,
I keep the place clean and like to spazz out about germs and stuff, I mean that I will bore you to death with one awful Justin Bieber song that I will play over and over and over, and want to do the same thing every night until I too get bored of it."
"Oh, that's ok! I'm like that too!"
"Really? Oh wow, this is so great! I've finally found someone I can obsess over things with!"
Of course, that didn't last very long. He introduced me to a series he liked, "
How I Met Your Mother" which of course, I quickly became obsessed with and wanted to watch every night. I was also going through a
let's eat nachos for every meal! phase at the same time. It was around two months in; when we'd watched the entire series four times, and our physiques actually started to personally resemble blobs of cheese, when he finally pleaded with me that we "do something else, please,
anything else..."
While I was somewhat disappointed that he didn't quite have the same level of obsessive stamina as myself, I supposed in the long run it was a good thing that I was doing new things. With this in mind however, sometimes I worry about my obsessiveness, and the possibility that any of these things can turn into an addiction.
Not a big addiction, like drugs or heroine or anything. But I've always been weary in my life about trying things such as smoking, with this obsessive personality of mine in the back of my mind, so it was an interesting thing when weaning myself on to coffee.
I never really thought I was addicted to the stuff, and sometimes it can be hard to establish what an addiction actually is.
Is addiction a bad thing?
And when does obsession turn into compulsion?
I once had a friend who told me he smoked weed because he enjoyed it. He believed he wasn't addicted to the stuff, and continued to smoke it because he knew that when he didn't want it, he didn't
need it. When I was hanging around with him, I knew he wanted to date me, but the drug placed a reluctance on my part. I was around 13/14 at the time, and it wasn't that I minded the drug so much, or even understood the implications of it entirely. I just knew that
I personally could not smoke it, or even try it, for fear that I would become addicted.
With this in mind, I didn't like him smoking it around me, because mother had once beautifully summarised people who take drugs;
"These druggies, they're in a different world to you and me! They don't know what's going on, they're in a different place to you and there's no way to know what they're seeing compared to what you're seeing!"
So of course, I believed that everytime he smoked weed there was every possibility in the world he was going to think I was a dragon and stab me.
As I say, I didn't fully understand the implications of the drug at the time.
It was a peculiar thing to listen to him and his own thoughts of the drug. When I mentioned to him that I didn't like him smoking it - I didn't like how it made him, I didn't like the company he kept when he smoked (other dragon stabbing druggies that might turn on me at any moment) etc etc... he still maintained that he could give it up whenever he wanted, and so it wasn't a problem.
Still, my fourteen year old self had to ask, why, if he was not addicted to it, did he need to continue smoking it around me, when I didn't like it? He knew on some level that I was uncomfortable with it, even though I don't think I mentioned dragons to him at the time (I didn't want to put these ideas in his head).
His arguement to me was something along the lines of perspective. He told me that one night, his brother thought I was a
huge druggy. I found this hard to believe; we were at a house party, and I'd had a few to drink, but with my young age it didn't take much for me to be drunk, and I certainly couldn't drink more than three cans without passing out. How on earth did he think I was a druggy?
"You were talking to my hamster. He thought you were off your face on drugs."
"Because I was talking to your hamster? That seems a bit extreme, I talk to lots of animals, drunk or sober, lots of people do!"
"Yes, but the difference is;
you expected it to talk back."
I stopped seeing the boy not long after, for one reason or another. He still smokes weed to this day. No dragons have been sighted in my area for a long time. I often question the underlying implications of this.
So, managing to avoid heroine addiction and teenage pregnancy in my teenage tears, it took me a long time to wean myself on to coffee. Initially I wouldn't touch the stuff, but as I got older, it seemed hard not to go for "coffee breaks" at uni, or to turn down a hot drink at a friends house. People somehow seemed put out when I'd request a class of water over a tea or coffee, and not being able to stand the taste of tea, I tried to monitor my coffee intake. I would only drink it a few times a month, definitely not more than once a week, and never more than one cup a day. I read somewhere a long time ago that 2 cups a day is a safe measure to keep your nerves functioning well.
I also worried about my teeth. I knew that it stained them, and was scared of them turning yellow. Of course, gradually, this did happen. I have horrible manky teeth, yet for some reason I bought a cup of coffee this morning, after vowing about four times this week never to drink it again. I've had cups brought to me in bed as a treat, cups bought by myself as a treat, cups to keep me awake, and cups as excuses to sneak off and gossip.
Today I bought one as a treat. I was half an hour early for my lecture, and decided that for some reason I deserved it, at 9.30 a.m. I had decided I was having a bad day, and that coffee would cure this. I purchased a small, as I never have a large, and then found myself sneaking off again a few hours later, as this new Toffeenut Latte was absolutely divine. I had the cream and the trimmings, and decided that I would get another one, a large, and it would be like a big frothy dessert to enjoy while the class mused over lovely books they'd like to read in the future.
I drank the cup quicker than I'd thought. Suddenly my eyes wide open, and I began to panic. My heart was beating in my chest and my head was pounding. I needed to get out of the room, I couldn't concentrate. People were speaking, but it seemed like my hands were taking on a life of their own, shaking and useless, I couldn't write with them, I couldn't hear people properly, and I had a strange urge that I was going to be sick. I was in a different world. A world of panic. I had the coffee shakes, and I didn't know what to do about it, other than go stab a dragon.
It's been around three hours now, and I'm still full of caffeine. I'll probably write five other blogs, but somehow I feel the bigger picture, the special meaning behind this blog I was trying to write, has fallen off the lines somewhere, and now I'm struggling to get back to it.
No matter. I'm sure it'll come to later tonight when I'm watching "
How I Met Your Mother" at 5 a.m because I can't sleep.
