I tried to trust the triangle.

I feel terrible today. I hit a crying jag last night. I didn't know it was coming. I felt like my whole life had been pointless. Like I really made a bollix of everything. Of everything! (Bollix because I've been reading a lot of Roddy Doyle books.) I had to get to a research study at UCLA at 8am this morning. So between waking up early and staying up late crying, I feel horrible today. Like shit. 

The research study was for PTSD. It was one of the ones that pays alright. $245 all in. All you have to do is tell them about your traumatic history, your symptoms and then come in for a lab visit. They took some blood and some pee. They gave my arm a sonagram while using a cuff to contract my blood vessels. (The study is about what stress over time does to your veins.) Then they followed my eyes while I looked at different faces with different expressions. They definitely didn't hire actors or photographers to get those. I didn't believe the people's emotions for a second, and the lighting was shit. 

Lastly, they hooked me up to a bunch of wires. An ECG and another thing -- FRM maybe? -- that measured my heart rate, my movement (breathing, eye twitching) and the sweatiness of my palms. They put headphones on my ears-- I keep saying "they" but it was a lovely woman just out of undergrad named Kim who had immaculate eyebrows. Anyway, Kim put headphones on my ears and a camelback on my front. The task was a "startle" task where they unexpectedly played a loud sound in my ears. Mostly the screen was white (I was sitting in front of a computer monitor), but sometimes a blue square would show up on the left side of the screen. Other times it was a maroon triangle on the right. Part way into the first session a poof of air was shot at my neck. (It was like an intense version of being in the Indiana Jones ride. Or it was like getting hit in the face with a squirt gun.) It wasn't very painful, but it wasn't nice. 

What was happening was that every time the blue square showed up, I'd get shot with air. When the triangle appears, no air. The weird thing was that I started to resent the triangle. I mean, don't get me wrong, both shapes were absolute cunts. But the square at least had the decency to be a mean bully to my face. The square was consistent, always shooting me with air. The triangle never did, but I was always waiting for it to. The triangle could change its mind and turn on me at any moment. The triangle was shifty. At least with the square boy, you knew what you were getting. 

I mean, the way this ^ maps to my relationships -- or relationships in general -- is... you know, bad. The poor person who never does anything wrong but gets leveled with heavy suspicion because other people in my life have been cunts. (Again with the reading Irish author Roddy Doyle. Now I say the c word, I guess.) Towards the end, I was trying to actively trust the triangle. Like, I was consciously trying to relax my body, open my throat to the air shooter, to show it that I was capable of being loved.