Will the real Jeannine please stand up

I have social anxiety (and a lot of other things whose acronyms I string together and lovingly refer to as my Alphabet Soup Disorder.) I deal with it a lot better than I used to and some people that I interact with regularly are completely unaware of it. But it is still there. And that means that it is really hard for me to start up a conversation with a stranger. Even in a group of friends, I often just sit back and listen. It also means that almost every word and action is accompanied by me wondering how those around me will take what I do and say.

I'm also not super touchy-feely. I don't always jump anymore when someone touches me unexpectedly and if I'm with a touchy-feely group, I can get through the hello and goodbye hugs just fine. But I'm not the one hugging everyone in sight. Not usually anyway.

But there are times when all of that disappears and I am someone else. Catch me after I've given a great performance and I'm all about hugs. I'll hug complete strangers. I just won NaNoWriMo and then made 5 or 6 hilarious, totally unedited posts on the forum. They were what I really wanted to say, not what I revised to make pleasing to the ears of my listeners (or eyes of my readers in this case.) If you get my brain going and I am intellectually excited and challenged, the quiet girl disappears and you can't shut me up. In all of these cases, I am still in or coming off of an experience of total flow. I love flow! When I'm working in flow, I am totally focused and thoroughly enjoy whatever it is I am doing. But I don't think the benefits end there. I think it actually changes my brain chemistry for awhile afterwards. I can't remember if Csikszentmihayli (you won't believe how many times I had to check to see that I spelled that correctly, and I'm still not sure, but I'm not going to check again) says anything about that in the book. I'll have to reread it and see. But I can't help but wonder if flow makes my brain more "normal". (Yes, I know there are no truly normal brains out there.) Is this who I am supposed to be? Is this who I would be if my brain always functioned like it should?

The flow and post-flow Jeannine is kinder, more affectionate, more honest. And I'm certainly more open. That's a good thing, but it kind of scares me too. Sometimes that part of your brain that shouts "Don't say that!" is right. Some things are best left unsaid, or unwritten. I'm also a little frightened of what I might do if the wrong person took advantage of one of those moments. When I first moved to MN I dated some real losers. (If you are my FB friend, you are not one of them, which will be obvious when you read the next part.) Their number 1 goal was sex. But they didn't get very far, because all their sweet talk and/or acting macho did nothing for me. There weren't many second dates and I don't think anyone made it to 3 dates. Years later when I was telling a friend about it, I jokingly said, "Those guys would have gotten a lot farther with a good intellectually stimulating conversation." It was funny. And true. And scary.

When I'm coming off of one of those great moments, my everyday walls and barriers that I usually put up to protect myself fall away. And I am happy to let them go. I don't need them. But what about those lines that I've said I won't cross? It was easy to avoid them when a wall stood between me and the line, but I'm afraid that without the wall I may lose track of where the line is. I may cross it thinking it is a remnant of the wall I just tore down.

Maybe I just crossed it. Maybe this is TMI.