November 10, 2010
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still weird
Not that I would want to, but Superman and I will never be able to break up, because he is privy to way too many of my foibles and weird things, more so than anyone else I’ve dated, and not just in an abstract way. I think he has witnessed most of my freakishness firsthand, whereas most of my other boyfriends knew about some things but not others, or were exposed to limited tranches of my obsessions and nonsense.
I thought I had finally gotten to a point where he had basically seen everything, and there wasn’t anything left for him to discover, because I was already letting it all hang out.
As usual, I was wrong, as we learned on Saturday night. He knew about this one in theory, and had always thought it was strange and probably exaggerated. Not anymore.
Meeting people (and sometimes dating them) was always a fun pastime when I was a student in Boston and New York, and being an expat in Europe meant that there was a constant ebb and flow of people in our social circle. I discovered during my senior year, however, that certain people (there are very few of them — I’ve only met five in my entire life) trigger an inexplicable reaction — simply being near them makes me feel suddenly and violently ill. My fingers get cold, my face goes numb, the blood leaves my head, and I get dizzy and extremely nauseated. My options when this happens are to either immediately put distance between the person and me (it is directly related to proximity and the symptoms abate very quickly if I just leave the room), or to puke (which I once did on a dinner date, which was really embarrassing).
We were at a birthday party on Saturday night, and I was driving, so I didn’t have anything to drink. Superman had a drink or two, and we were chatting to the birthday boy (a good friend) and his friends (very few of whom we knew, as they run in a completely different social circle than we do). I suddenly started feeling ill, and it got increasingly worse. It had been so long since the last time it had happened, though, and it had never happened in a random social setting, always with an individual that I could identify as triggering it, so I didn’t realize what was happening until it was almost too late. One of his friends, and I don’t know which one, was making me ill. I realized what was happening so late in the process that I was barely able to grab Superman, tell him that “We. Have. To. Go. NOW.”, and then run outside to retch in the bushes. When I was finally able to tell him what had happened, he was so amused that he wanted to go back into the party to talk to each person individually to figure out who was triggering such a violent reaction in me (the people were almost all strangers, and packed into a small enough room that I couldn’t really narrow it down to one person or even someone in a particular cluster of people).
Sigh. I had kind of hoped that I had gotten over my odd “allergy” (is there any way to describe this) to certain people, or that the “allergy” only applied to dates or potential dates, but apparently I still have it, and it could be triggered by anyone. Really awkward.
I had always harbored kind of a secret hope that this was not an uncommon problem, and that maybe lots of people experience it but just don’t talk about it, but based on Superman’s reaction, I’m guessing that it’s not so common…
Comments (7)
i know what you mean. while my symptoms aren’t as pronounced, i do feel a lurching and violent feeling at the pit of my stomach when i’m around certain people.
@ThePrince - Have you figured out what it is that makes you feel that way?? I would avoid it if I knew how… :/
@Troid - i’ve started to observe patterns, yes. as shallow as it sounds, it comes from the appearance of the person first. there’s a certain degree of lookism that i adhere to and when i feel someone is veering off of those parameters, it signals something about the person’s overall character that i don’t like. that’s when the feelings start.
@ThePrince - Hm, that won’t work for me. None of the people that triggered it in me had anything that was off in the looks department. I’m chalking it up to some weird pheromone incompatibility.
@Troid - you never know with these things. i wouldn’t count out the pheromone theory at all…
That’s… oh my goodness, that is odd. I have never heard of such a thing, but upon further reflection, I wonder why I haven’t heard of it more often. Is it related to smell? Most of my visceral reactions are strongly smell-related, I think because smell is so related to taste and taste is what really makes me gag. I wonder if you’re just attuned to people on a different level. Pheromones actually sound like a really likely candidate to me, but I have no idea how you would test that theory or guard against it.
Actually I guess if pheromones were the problem, you could have something like Essence of Superman distilled and carry that with you at all times, or dab it on your upper lip or something
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Sounds to me like it *could* be an empathic reaction. How strong is your intuition?