Belghast Hates Crowds

Mixed Up Day

eso 2014-02-15 17-55-35-41 This has been a really odd day.  I am doing a second post today so that I can do my factoid.  I didn’t really want to include it as part of the previous one… because the previous one was pretty epic.  I woke this morning to find that the NDA had lifted for Elder Scrolls Online.  I have seriously been waiting for this day for so long, but oddly enough I was relatively unprepared.  I didn’t have all my ducks in a row, and tons of material ready to post once the embargo had dropped.  I guess it makes sense, as winging it is more my style.  Hopefully over the coming weeks until the release I will keep posting little tidbits.  The NDA lift was only relating to the beta weekend content, namely the first 3-4 zones for each faction.  As a result there are still a few things I can’t really talk about fully yet.

Nothing at all really went as planned today.  Originally we were going to get up and around, and I was to take my wife to meet a friend.  Then they were going to my mother-in-laws to pick up a baby goat.  Yes that does sound strange I know… but it was a thing that was happening.  Basically the goat would go to our friends house and be able to roam freely on what is ending up as being a pseudo livestock sanctuary.  Things happened however and we wound up spending the entire time killing time…  only to find out about 4 pm that it was not going to happen at all today.  Had I know all of this to start off, I would have blogged in the morning.

Belghast Hates Crowds

It was an absolutely lovely day, so while we were stuck in a holding pattern… we at least got to run most of the errands that had been stacking up.  Since it has been below freezing for what feels like a month, everyone was out and about with the same basic idea we had.  The problem with this is the fact that every single place we went was crowded.  Crowds are something that causes extreme anxiety in me.  If people are packed in too tightly in too small of a space, I get this severe fight or flight instinct.

Earlier in the day my wife wanted to run by our local Goodwill, which is a pretty small store in the first place.  To make things worse they were apparently having some insane half off sale or something.  The result was that you could barely move around the store.  I had run over to the convenience store to get us drinks for the road, and thankfully by the time I fought my way inside she was ready to go.  The moment I stepped inside this massive panic set over me, and as I pushed through to where she was it was like my skin was crawling.  In most times by sheer power of will I can reset the desire to run screaming away.  That is not to say that the instinct is not there and is not strong.

This seems to be something I inherited from my father, and his father before him and so on down our family line.  I grew up in a town of 2500, and my grandfather refused to go to the grocery store, or to the sonic drive in… because there were too many people there.  My father, cannot make it for more than a few minutes in most stores without having to return to the car and wait for my mother.  The fact that I can exist in society and live a pretty normal life is a real boon.  The older I get however, the worse it seems to get.  The place that it bothers me the most is a crowded elevator.  Being a big guy already, trying to squeeze into a standing room only metal box is something I can barely handle.  There was a time at which I could go to concerts, but now that many people assembled in one place just is an impassible barrier.

For the most part I have found ways to mitigate my anxiety.  Movie theaters are a huge problem, with people crammed in tightly.  So to get past that I tend to go to matinees where there are simply not that many people.  If I can get an entire row by myself I can normally make it through the experience just fine.  For example this past Friday I got out to see the Lego Movie at the 4:15 showing… giving me pretty much free reign of the place.  So knowing that the instincts will set in, I can just avoid situations that will make me try and climb the walls.

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