Friends, I appear to have relapsed. While I can't recall blogging about this previously, the pages of my journal from last year are filled this particular issue: my great social anxiety. Don't laugh. It's not funny.

I had thought that, only by God's grace, I had overcome that hurdle, but as I just said, I seem to have relapsed. Due to quite a few semi-related incidents in the past few weeks, I once again question and re-question every action's motivation.

It doesn't stop there. My motivations aren't the only victims. My tact. My approach. Other's interpretations. What my mother would say.

They've all returned in full force, bringing me back to the realization that a mountain top in the Himalayas doesn't look so bad after all.  My honeymoon with humanity appears to be over. It's back to business as usual: ie, psychotic Problematic.

What's more, Sylvia, my alter-ego, seems to have returned as well. Don't misinterpret this. I don't have fractured personalities. Rather, what I do have is a very dark sense of humor, irony, cynicism, and a generally morbid fascination with loneliness in pain, all of which I term "Sylvia" to distinguish them from who I consider myself to be.

Wait a second. I thought we were seeing the dark side of Problematic these past few months.

There is actually a difference, but it's a little hard to explain. Basically, Sylvia is an appreciation for the beauty in tragedy combined with a complete disdain for assumed pain. Sylvia is a stoic philosopher from the days of Greek philosophy. She's an aesthetic, if a cynical and calloused one.

While Sylvia was gone, I had more compassion for other teenagers going through their own trials. "It's possible," I told myself, "that their grief is just as real as mine."

But the return of double-think and Sylvia is making me wonder if all the angst of the past fall has been nothing but that: they type of dramatics I despise so much caused by nothing more than the racing of chemicals and hormones through my pubescent body. It need not be stated that this doubt extends to others, even the ones I love and trust.

The sum of all this is to say that yet another layer has been added to my melodrama. GK Chesterton once said "Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?" and while I am having trouble following his advice, I agree, there's not much else you can do. Wait it out and laugh.

It's aggravating, really. I was close, ever so close to breaking out into full-fledged humanity. To be caught in old traps when freedom was close enough to smell is frustrating. I am impotent in my own snares.

Yes, they protect me, but at what cost? Is reality worth enough to open myself up to for more betrayals? What if they're self-inflicted injuries? What price am I willing to pay to be secure in the knowledge that no one else will hurt me? Should I prefer the injuries of a friend to ones of my own devising?

Friends, if you think of it, please include me in your prayers. Because that mountain top has never looked so appealing.

B