Just don’t think about it. You’re thinking about it. Stop. Stop FUCKING thinking about it. Fuck, here it comes.
It’s a wave. No, I suppose it’s more like a tide. The slow, inevitable shift of liquid from one unseen place to a much more present, noticeable location. A, dare I say, in your face, location. It crashes like a wave though. Crashes and burns.
And really, half the time I’m caught in a deep red blush, there’s nothing for me to be ashamed of. It’s just a little devil on my shoulder, poking at me with his pitchfork.
Hey, don’t do it. Nah, why would you? There’s nothing embarrassing going on. You’re good, aren’t you? Yeah, look at you go — you’re so good. But then again, there’s nowhere to turn if you did blush. Come to think of it, you’re a little trapped in that room there, aren’t you? That update you’re about to give? Easy. In the bag. But boy, sure would be a shame if everyone at this meeting saw you blush again, wouldn’t it? They’d wonder what you were hiding. What you think of yourself. Where your confidence went. Whether they can trust you at all in a moment of leadership.
“I, uh…ghmmm. Excuse me. This week, with the p…fairly drastic shift in commodities prices, we decided it was best to bet our hedge…hedge our bets, or rather, explore a bigger diversification into the healthcare sector on the…for the coming Q3…”
The rest of what I said in my update was lost to me. Perhaps, even, if possible, more-so than anyone in the room who had the discomfort of sitting through my prattling while my face burned and sweated in a perpetual inferno of self-deprecating shame. In moments like this, the only thing I’m able to focus on, as with most everyone else in the room, is the heat of my face. My thoughts are burned off by its fever. The rest of what I have to offer takes a reclined back seat.
Blood pressure through the roof. Dome-splitting, gut-wrenching, face-melting levels of awkwardness ensue. My whole world as I’m supposed to belong in it, melts away like a failed broadcast. The only hope I have is of someone interrupting me before the chain reaction of blood vessels explodes to my outer epidermis. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often.
When I finally look up after my update to see the damage I’ve caused, all eight of my colleagues faces’ eyes are cast down at the table, at laptops, at a far-off speck on the wall, presumably to respectfully allow me to cool off without further judgment. Even without making a lick of sense, everyone at the table knows better than to follow up with any questions for me. They too feel the burn for this underpaid, painfully shy Associate Financial Analyst.
At least it’s over. Slowly my confidence begins to build back up. This always happens immediately after the attention is diverted from me. Like an army of ants wasting no time to rebuild their hill after it had been toppled.
How to avoid blushing? The research and tactics employed have been many:
-Puffing out the belly to force blood downward.
-Drinking excessive cold water right before a likely incident to cool the body.
-A variety of levels of indifference. From the immediate, self-serving “I’m just going to trick myself into thinking that I have no fucks left to give,” to a larger, more root-down existential approach. By this I mean trying to channel in the inconsequentiality of it all. Of life. I try to think about a flea on a speck of dust floating through the vast black universe. What the fuck does the flea care if blood fills its face? What does it matter? The usual outcome of this large-scale thought tactic is my realization that as the flea, my immediate experience and surroundings are much more consuming than living in a larger philosophical context. To me, this little life game matters a whole lot; I’ve got a lot riding on this mode of existence. The pressure of that is ultimately what causes me to demand of much of myself in the first place. Even when I am able to embrace the concept of lackluster existence, or the overly-examined life, I’m ultimately left unfocused on the task before me, and essentially depressed.
Other options out there include:
-Psychotherapy (if I had the money, I’d schedule an appointment to investigate further).
-Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy. A surgery wherein a hole is drilled into the chest and the spinal nerve associated with facial sweating is severed with a laser or knife. Sounds terrifying.
Even when I’m alone, sometimes I’ll trigger a blush. I’ll rush to the mirror to gauge the change of pigment in my face and compare it to how deep I think the red feels. But by the time I get to the mirror it’s usually faded into a casual fuchsia glow. Maybe someday I’ll see footage of myself or catch a glimpse in an oddly-placed mirror behind an audience while I’m public speaking. I hope to calibrate my internal burn gauge to what the outward monitor reads.
When did this all start? It’s been happening as long as I can remember being placed in stressful situations — those in which all eyes are on me. Middle school speeches? Some of the worst, deepest blushes and facial sweats I’ve ever endured. Perhaps the deep mental damage was done then, and I’m just scratching at the scar tissue. Perhaps someday, with age and experience, I truly will have no fucks left to give.
Until then, I’ll continue to display my fear of the world through my see-through skin. I read somewhere that it stops entirely when you meet the love of your life. That the confidence, compassion, and supports system that stems from your love is the cure to any challenge or darkness life may throw at you. Perhaps someday I’ll get to calibrate that out too.