tales of anxiety
04.01.18 | 7:39 pm
given my behavior the past two weeks, perhaps it's a lesson that saying less is sometimes more.
perhaps it's an indication from my body to tone it down.
perhaps it's the weather.
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sometimes it's frustrating being the type of person who looks for meaning in these unsubstantial things. it never quite gets me anywhere, aside from further in my mind where i hope to discover an answer to a question that hasn't even been asked.
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i said, over the break, rather offhandedly to my family, that by next summer, i hoped to be moved out, i hoped to be out of this city, this county, even. and now, they're all bombarding me with concerned looks and tones, "where do you want to go? don't you need to teach here another year? can you get a job without this certification? why do you want to leave?"
why do you want me to stay so badly? so badly, when it's clear that i feel like i'm crawling out of my skin?
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i wrote a list of things i want to accomplish in 2018. it started as an "18 in 2018" list, but that seemed overwhelming, so i cut it down to ten, down to five.
but the only real thing on my list is this:
grapple with the fact that i probably have actual anxiety. talk to an actual professional about it. and start facing it head on.
does it help to drink three quarters of a bottle of wine by myself and mass text about ten different people different parts of what's happening in brain that i can't shut off? for a few hours, maybe. but obviously not for the long term.
i find it so difficult to simply be alone with my thoughts. it feels suffocating. like there's nothing i can do that will let them out.
in may of last year, when it really started becoming clear that matt and i were going to break up, i literally couldn't fall asleep because i would get lyrics to hamilton stuck in my head, and they were so oppressive that they just kept going in circles and circles and circles for literal hours.
when i moved back this summer, for nearly a month, i would go one day unable to sleep at all, to sleeping 12 hours straight the next day. for nearly a month!
i spent six weeks convinced that every bite of food in my mouth was going to get caught in my throat and choke me to death.
i became obsessed with the possibility that a dog would attack emma, molly, and i on a walk that it made it nearly unbearable to go alone - every single sound, every single movement i saw sent a jolt of adrenaline throughout my body.
and then, of course, there are the times when i become obsessive about a new possibility (think of this in terms of dating and friendship), where, after a small moment, my mind catapults forward to the next day, the next week, the next five years of our courtship - and i can't stop it. it becomes oppressive, like the hamilton songs, and it keeps me up at night even though i desperately want it to stop.
at this point, i find myself reliving these situations in my head so vividly that i start speaking aloud without meaning to.
on vacation, even before jenna threw herself off the building, i was so afraid of being near the rail or being in the elevator that it would physically make me dizzy to even see my niece touch the edge.
when my mother asked me a simple question - what would you like to have at the party? - i felt so overwhelmed with worry that it was as though a creature were trying to crawl out of my chest.
perhaps some of this is normal. (perhaps all of it is normal and i'm making too much of it.)
but the truth is that it makes me unhappy and unable to feel fulfilled.
i can address it. i need to address it. i can address it.
and i can feel better.