Symp-to-matic

Au-to-matic
E-lec-tronic
clockwork toes and
dominoes, oh, how she
hates loves knows
all the sys-te-matic
ticks in the hardware
will show.



So you were all liek hm,

So I'm all liek: Here. Because I can't postpone this any further.

123go.

Happiness/Comfort: When I am comfortable, I feel very loose; loose muscled, loose minded. I am less finicky about touching people and being touched; I enjoy it very much, akshully. I usually take up as much room as possible; I wind into shapes because that feels good too. Sometimes, when I am very comfortable, I fidget or shake my leg or move my fingers, because it keeps me awake, which keeps me conscious of my comfort. Or something like that.
Happiness is something else--it has a more social connotation for me. It happens more in my head. When I'm happy, I smile--even if it's at a plurk, which sometimes, it is. I am not always comfortable when I am happy, but I often am. I bruised my knee and skinned my elbow awhile back, and I think it should have hurt like a bitch, but I was really happy at the time, so I didn't really notice it. And I think a part of me even liked it. I've noticed that when I'm very happy, I tend to want things like fruit (usually berries) or vegetables. Or Nutella.

Sadness/depression: This is a very tiring emotion. It is usually the only time I get headaches, and very localized headaches at that. I feel as if there are too many thoughts clamoring about. When I exhale, I exhale deeper--a hollow kind of deeper. Crying usually helps. Crying makes my face too warm and my heart beat a bit faster. I don't like eating when I'm sad, but I often find myself hungry then.

Nervousness/Anxiety: I blush really bad when I get on-the-spot nervous, like in a job interview. I speak too fast, and my voice comes out a bit weird because I think I hold my throat taut. Anxiety is the one that fucks up my heart and stomach--when I have time to think about all the ways something can go wrong. The stomach constricts; I sweat. My heart isn't that much faster, but it beats much harder, and if it goes on for very long, my chest gets tired of all that fuss and aches very badly. I run my teeth over my bottom lip.

Anger/frustration: I shift in my seat when I am frustrated. Sometimes, when someone says something that bothers me, I stiffen and bend my neck, but I try to not do this because it is much more noticeable. When I am angry, I am most aware of my arms, and wanting to do things with them--anything. I catch myself gritting my teeth a lot.

Arousal: The first thing I am aware of is an alertness. I feel very awake, very quick, almost caffeinated, sans the jitters. There must be something particular, something short and swift that incites it--a sentence, a picture, a gesture, a texture. My heart beats once in largely the same way it does for anxiety--a thick, hurt-ish way-- except it does it only once, and is followed by a weird (I cannot quite say pleasant, but I will not say unpleasant) curling sensation in my stomach. My cheeks may flush, but only rarely. This is a first stage of sorts; in the second, I arch my back a lot and become fond of touching textures in much the same way as when I am just very comfortable. And I will not go further than this for the sake of my blog's modesty.

Embarrassment/Shame: After the incident, I usually bite the inside of my mouth or make wonky expressions. I might blush for embarrassment; shame is more extreme, and comes with the same symptoms as anxiety, sans sweating. I cannot keep myself from replaying the cause of shame in my mind, and every time I do, a word will catch and my chest will ache once (like arousal, except less fun). It is a heavy feeling, and it doesn't dissipate as quickly as its counterpart for arousal. I take up rigid, uncomfortable positions; I busy myself with either writing or organizing or just moving.

Hunger: I'm actually a bit nommish right now. :\ it feels like a dull bead is dragging down my throat, and it stops and sits at about the level of my collar bone. When I sit, my stomach feels like a large but hollowed out shape; when I stretch out on my back, it feels luxurious and comfortable, but makes me moar hungry.



I've taken too long to write this, and now I've forgotten some of the things I had recognized in the moment. So this is by no means all encompassing--there are many emotions that exist between them, and the symptoms may change and blend depending on the stimuli (I have a bad habit of mixing things together to make thinks like fear-surprise-arousal and anxiety-hunger). A stimuli is never all this or all that, and so the response will never be all this or all that. Some of the mixtures are quite pleasing; others are very uncomfortable. They can sometimes be consciously constructed, but only if it is done with a certain swift thoughtlessness.
Example: I was fumbling with a pen and almost dropped it. In lurching forward to catch it, my heart jolted in surprise-fear, which is the same way as nervousness. But it didn't drop, and so I imagined something else to carry on that feeling--an individual's pleasing gait, as it were. And because those two emotions are so close in symptoms anywho, it worked. Like a clean and fluid organ transplant, the meaning (the emotion?) can sometimes be displaced.

But these are things that I forget so quickly that it is difficult to know anything about them, really. So I will nap instead.

Mm.