You can tell people you are paranoid and that you are so everyday so that it influences most of your experiences, often in a very distorting, disorienting, and unpleasant way. You can tell them this over and over and over again, but you often get the feeling that they really just don’t understand what it is like.
Today, I was talking with my grandmother, and she was, once again, saying that I didn’t make enough efforts to socialize with my neighbors when I am away from my apartment, where I spend most of my time in seclusion. I said something like, "You have to realize that I’m paranoid all the time, and that’s a large part of the reason I’m not very sociable.
"Oh, that must be terrible!" She replied.
For the thousandth time, I was sure she didn’t really know what she was talking about. I reached for a way to convey the experience to her. She is a very old woman, and she has a lot of bad headaches, many probably due to her high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. Surely, knowledge of this had a lot to do with the analogy that popped into my head.
Imagine you have a killer headache. Maybe you are having one hell of a sinus attack. You have one thing on your mind: Pain! It hurts. It aches. It’s what you have on your mind. At the same time you have to do some shopping at the grocery store. You have to pick out some items price-consciously without a shopping list. But your head is killing you. You manage to remember that you need instant coffee. Where is the coffee? You are trying to find the aisle. There are confusing numbers of people with shopping carts you must negotiate around. You are wandering around reading signs with a jack hammer between your eyes. You’re certain people can see the pain on your face. You wish you could go home and lay down. Now you almost knocked over someone’s four year old, passing the canned vegetables.
Now you find the coffees and are trying to decide which brand you want, trying to compare the prices of different sized jars. Now there is throbbing behind your eyes. You finally grab a jar that seems cheap enough, even if it isn’t decaffeinated. You start to examine the label, when you realize someone has been waiting to get by you with their cart. Embarrassed, you move back to the edge of the aisle, certain they have given you a dirty look.
When you finally get to the front of the checkout line with your three items, you have trouble finding the right amount of money in your wallet. You had added the prices up in line and forgot to take into account the tax on your bottle of pop because your forehead is splitting in two. You hand the cashier what you at first think is exact change. Because of the aching at your temples, you don’t notice she is waiting for another quarter. When you realize that, you feel embarrassed again and reach into your pocket for a coin. Grabbing your bag, you hurry out of the store, leaving your change at the counter. You make it home ten minutes later, after almost crossing the street at the wrong time and getting run over.
The idea I’m trying to express in this story is that paranoia is disorienting like many physical ailments and pains can be. Paranoia is much more than that, but it can make you function more poorly and do things that seem inconsiderate or unwise to others who cannot tell what is going on inside of you. You may even seem unsociable or rude, when the truth is that you are in distress and discomfort. In the case of the headache, the source of your problem is not really tied to the environment in which you are behaving strangely and inexplicably (to others), which is very much the case with paranoia. A paranoid person’s disorientation is caused by the people, their talking, and the other noises and events surrounding the sufferer in combination with the mental illness that makes them vulnerable to these situations. These lead to paranoid thoughts about the meaning the stimuli might have to the sufferer’s actions and identity.
Now imagine that you live a mile from the public library, where you have walked to return books and find a magazine. After you have been at the library for a while, you realize you need to urinate badly. It crept up on you, because you were engrossed in the paperback novels section. You move toward the restrooms at a good pace. Did someone see how fast I was walking? The door is locked! "Out-of-order" reads a small sign.
Oh God, I have to PEE! You head to the librarian’s desk. "Is there another restroom I can use?"
"No, that’s the only one. It broke down only a half hour ago, and, since the library is only open another forty-five minutes, it will be repaired after closing."
"Thank you." You reply, and begin heading toward the exit. You move across the lobby, sure that everyone notices the way you are walking, trying to put as little pressure on your bladder as possible. Halfway to the doors, it’s too much and something gives but only a little. Your crotch is slightly wet. A man comes in through the entrance. You are certain he saw it happen. You are afraid to check your pants because someone will notice. In fact, you are sure everyone at the checkout counter noticed the strange way you were walking and saw the leakage happen. You don’t look back, since you would have to face their stares. Instead you push through the doors and head down the sidewalk.
A mother and her two children and two high school girls are heading into the library from the parking lot. They are looking at you. They see the wet spot you are sure is growing larger on your slacks. You hurry pass them. Behind you, you hear one of the girls giggling. You know she is laughing at you. Your bladder is still complaining.
You make it home without any more pants-wetting incidences, although it is difficult. Heading down busy streets, with large numbers of people passing you, you wait for lights and cross streets several times. Everyone is staring at your crotch. It is so embarrassing. You feel like an idiot. You will never be able to go back to that library branch again. Everyone saw what happened. Your neighbors noticed the wet spot. For the next two weeks, every time you come or go from your apartment building, you can feel the stares. There must be rumors going around the neighborhood. It is awful.
This is probably still a poor example of how it feels to go about your daily activities with paranoia. Yet maybe it can offer some idea what it is like. Of course, paranoia can be more pervasive and almost always is much less realistic and rational than the thoughts in the scenario I just described. And it does not fade and go away with distance from a specific unusual event. It is constantly renewed and aggravated. It shifts and changes in more and less bizarre forms over time.
|THE END|