Wednesday, November 20, 2013

There's Actual Physiological Evidence of Depression!

Today was a really rough day.  Not for any reason in particular, but because I had a meeting with my counselor and I went in kind of on fire.  I went in telling her that I felt angry because I am so unbelievably tired of waiting to feel better.  Yes, I have a good day here and there, but overwhelmingly my days are either blah or bad.  I hate waking up not knowing whether or not my day is going to make me cry a lot or if I'll feel just fine most of the day.

We talked about how difficult it is for me to turn my brain off, how hard it is to calm the chaos that is perpetually ruining my peace of mind.  My brain is just constantly going, thinking about a million, bajillion things all at once and it's absolutely exhausting.  My therapist told me that when they look at FMRIs of depressed people's brains, that they show that there's intense amounts of activity going on, and that from that, scientists have discerned that depression is a stress-illness.  Except that when you look at a depressed person they look completely exhausted and like there's not a single thought in their head.  But the reason for that is that there's just so unbelievably much going on in there, so much stress, so much physical reaction to the stress in the mind that they look as though they're not capable of coming up with a coherent thought.

Hearing that from her was kind of a relief, because I feel so exhausted so much of the time and I don't feel like it's warranted at all.  She said that depression isn't just sadness, that it robs us of our vitality and our energy and our actual will to do things, while at the same time putting the brain on hyperdrive and overwhelming us with thoughts about what we should be doing and why we're terrible people because we're physically incapable of doing those things.

Anyway, I needed to write that down so that I can remember it.  That's all I feel like writing tonight because Ethan is over and he's making me laugh.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Just Some Wishes

Today is one of those days where all the shitty stuff and all of the evil of the world feels like a personal affront on me.  I feel just plain sad.  No other words to describe it, really.  I haven't written in...what, 4 days?  Let's see....I was out late getting plastered one night and couldn't even sit myself up let alone write by the time I got home.  The night after that, I got sick at my parents house and wanted to not move for fear of throwing up and had no intention of writing.  The other nights I think Ethan came over and I just didn't write.  Ethan spends the night a lot, even though he doesn't sleep well at my house.  I can relate - I never sleep well at the other person's place at the beginning of a relationship.  And I've pretty much insisted that we stay at my house all the time because his house is too quiet.  No cable, no internet.  The cacaphony in my head in all that silence might make my head actually explode, I fear.  That's why when I come home from work, on goes the TV.  Or some music.  I may not even be watching it, might be only half-listening to it, but it helps me not listen to all the crap in my head, or at least not focus on it, not pay attention to it.

Yesterday, my surrogate mom posted pictures on Facebook of her snorkeling off Cancun with manta rays and whale sharks, and it made my heart hurt deep, deep down.  I so long for the ocean.  I long to be able to go out on a boat and get in the water and swim with the creatures and explore whats beneath the surface.  I mean, that's mostly why I took the scuba class in the first place!  Anyway, looking at those pictures got me thinking about moving away from Colorado again, and where I would go and what I would do if I left.  Which then got me thinking about what I'm going to do about school, and how I can possibly continue it, feeling the way I feel about it.  I have so much pure hatred for it that even the simplest tasks for the one measly class I'm taking are absolutely monumental.  I would rather swallow a handful of rusty razors than do this schoolwork.  I would rather trudge up a snowy mountain with Ethan than do this work, and I hate snow and am not a fan of hiking.  But I feel like I'd at least be accomplishing something, where with school, I feel like even finishing this class, I'm nowhere closer to an end-point, or a goal.  I'm still just an accountant in the corporate office of a restaurant.  Doing nothing close to what I'm passionate about, or what gets my blood pumping.

Today, I've been wishing that instead of this stupid, awful depression - that gets very little respect in the medical community, is attached to a stigma wherein anyone that has it simply isn't trying hard enough to get better or feel better or be better, is attached to a stigma that presupposes that the person with depression is just lazy, or stubborn, and can't problem-solve their way out of the chasm in which they've settled - that I had a real disease that people will donate to for a cure, that people will run or walk or march for so that they can wipe it off the face of the planet, like breast cancer, or Hodgkins Lymphoma like two people I actually KNOW.  People who don't deserve to have to go through the horrors of chemo therapy, and being sick and having poison intravenously pumped into their bodies with the hopes that they will continue to live, when here I am, miserable anyway for no good reason.  I'd happily take their cancer and put it into my body because I'm suffering anyway.  Why not give me an illness that actually gives me cause to be sad and hopeless instead of this ridiculous affliction where my stupid neurotransmitters are out of whack.  These people's bodies are actually attacking themselves, and they remain hopeful, positive and in good spirits.  They don't deserve it, and I feel like I do.  I wish I had a REAL reason to be unhappy.

I wrote all of that earlier today when I needed a break at work.  I am not feeling quite as blue now that the day is pretty much over, but I'm really glad I got all that out right when I was feeling it.  I don't think I would have been able to capture the way I felt as well tonight.

I don't think I'm going to be able to keep up writing every day, as much as I'd like to.  I'm still going to try to write as much as possible, but I'm not going to hold myself to writing every single day.  There are just some days when I don't feel like writing, or don't feel like I have anything to write about, or I'm just too tired.  I definitely wish I had more opportunities to write at work because that's often when the most intense feelings wash over me and there's not much I can do about it.  Maybe I will try and make a point of taking a break to write briefly when I can when I'm feeling really badly if I can.

Anyway.  That's it for today I guess.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Missed Intentions

I didn't write last night.  I should have.  That's really the only reason I am writing tonight even though I don't really feel like it and I don't feel like I have much to write about.

I went to work today.  I got a lot of stuff done.  That needed to be done.  Jess was in today which was awesome because I really do miss having her around.  Maybe I'm delusional but I feel like I can tell when someone has genuinely positive feelings about me, and I think that she does.  I hope that she does, because I have genuinely positive feelings about her.

I had a brief moment of massive unhappiness today after I posted a status on Facebook about my BFF Colorado Kate having a very important weekend coming up.  I posted that she and her fiancee are in my thoughts and that I'm sending them all my love on their trip this weekend, and she got mad at me because apparently that was indicative of her getting married and people started blowing up her FB and her phone when she got off the plane.  She thought I'd overstepped some boundaries and blown the cover, though I felt that I had been as vague as I could be while still being heartfelt.  I guess I was wrong.

I met up with Ethan and some more of his coworkers at Twin Peaks after work and had a beer and some bar food and then came home and now it's bedtime.  Ethan is here with me and I am feeling quite tranquil and calm.  I really do like this guy an awful lot.

Yesterday, I got to ride my motorcycle.  A lot.  I rode it down to Denver, and back to Louisville and finally back home and the weather was perfect and it was beautiful.  That part made me happiest yesterday.  I had to see my therapist, which sort of ruined my good mood for a few minutes because it got real heavy real quick and I'd been kind of able to not think much about anything and was doing just fine that way.  Anyway, that was the high point of my day yesterday, aside from making Ethan a delicious spaghetti dinner and spending the evening in his arms.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

When The Day is Filled, The Mind is Occupied

I'd call today a good day, in the scheme.  I made it to work by 10am, even after stopping to get myself some breakfast and coffee.  I only had some housekeeping to do for work today which was really easy.  And Ethan stopped by to visit me for awhile, and that was lovely.  I got a lot done, including helping our Pearl Street location, who needed me to print like 1000 new menus (we call them Oisos), which I was able to do for them.

I stopped at the Registry to see if we had mail, and to say hi to some people over there that I hadn't seen in awhile.  Got to talk to my married guy friend for awhile, and then my old friend Amber for like 30 minutes.  By the time I got home I was feeling pretty good.

And that's about it for the day.  I really don't feel that well at all so I'm going to go to bed early and hopefully wake up early enough to actually make something of the day tomorrow.  We'll see....

Garfield Hates Mondays and So Do I

Let's see.  Today, I saw my psychiatrist again.  I must stress how satisfied I am with the treatment I am getting from this lady.  She's pretty great.  She asks me insightful questions and prods me for information, and even if she doesn't really, she seems to genuinely care.  She's having me up my Pristiq dosage to double what I've been on, so we'll see if maybe my anxiety goes away entirely.  I'll be honest, I didn't want to go in to see her because of how much effort it would take, but I went anyway, and I'm really glad I did.  Also I didn't have to pay for parking because today was Veteran's Day (thanks, Veterans!).

When I spend a whole day in the house, not really doing much or interacting with people, I feel the need to further isolate.  It's much harder to get out and do stuff when Phoenix is the only being I've really spoken actual verbal words to all day.  I guess that's why it's even more important that on those days I do go out and do something, even if it is something small.

I did exchange texts and IMs with most of my important people today.  I talked with Tiffany a bit, who is going through a rough patch and we agreed to try to check in with one another daily and come up with three positive things about the day to tell each other, which is an idea I got from Colorado Kate (I think I wrote about it...).  I'm hoping that it keeps me at least a little accountable for attempting to try to have a positive attitude.  It's a lot harder to come up with three positive things than one might thing, but it's worth a shot.  She mentioned that she has to stick out teaching third grade until May, because she'd much rather be at home, and I told her that I have to wait until at least May to make any kind of big life decisions.  After thinking really hard and carefully about making a cross-country move to Florida after breaking up with The Ex, that wouldn't even happen until my little sister is able to graduate college because she said she'd come with me.  It sure would beat going alone.  Plus I have to try to stay in school to keep insurance coverage.  And maybe get an internship.  Either way, I think that's a good timeline to set for myself because it doesn't put a lot of pressure on me to make any big decisions that I'm not capable of making right now.  It allows me plenty of time to think about all of my options and try to get better and feel better and not be impulsive and end up doing the wrong thing.

I very briefly talked to Colorado Kate, who has divulged to me that this weekend she's going to St. Louis (where her sister's family is) with her fiancee and dog to elope.  Her parents are flying in to be there and it's going to be a close family affair.  It makes me extremely happy to know that they're doing something like that, which will make them both very, very happy, but it makes me really sad that I won't get to be there to be a part of it.  She's been a close friend of mine for a good couple of years now.  We met when we were both working at Keller Williams almost 5 years ago and we got very close after she invited me on a camping trip two and a half years ago.  She's been there for me through a lot of emotional crap - including my year-long writing project - and I want to be there for her for something very special.  However, she's chosen to have it just be a family thing, none of her close friends will be there, and I have to respect and understand that.  I know that it's nothing personal, and I just want her to be happy.  It just sucks a little.

After my psychiatrist appointment, I stopped by my parents house to catch up with them for a few minutes.  They had a problem today because they let their cell phone bill (which includes both parents and both sisters) get pretty out of hand and then couldn't really pay it in full and all their phones got shut off.  I offered to pay it for them, or at least a portion of it, but they wouldn't let me.  They ended up spending money they'd been saving for Christmas for it.  I thought maybe if I actually went over there they might let me help them with it, but by the time I got there, they had already spend the Christmas money on it.  Either way, I got to see them for about half an hour, talk to them about Ethan and everything else adult that I never get to talk to them about when the kids are around, and then hung out until the kids got there so I could get some good hugs and kisses.  Which was wonderful.  Sometimes I wonder if hearing them tell me they love me and give me hugs and kisses would be a permanent cure for my mental illness.

After seeing my parents, I met Ethan at a bar where he was having drinks with his coworkers, and hung out there with them for a few hours.  That was my first outing with any of his people - he's only been hanging out with my people so far, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to do that.  He lost a bet last week over his fantasy football team and had to wear a bowtie and suspenders to work today and ended up getting crazy compliments on how great he looked - and I'll even admit that one of the pictures he had taken makes him look kind of like a model.  Which is freaking awesome.  Being physically attracted to someone I am dating is really important to me, and I'm at that point with Ethan and it feels really good.  I remember feeling that way on one occasion with The Ex....

On a different note, something that struck me today was a post by this lady that I've recently been following on Facebook, for the blog she writes called The Klonopin Chronicles.  She's been diagnosed Bipolar and is dealing with the breakup of her marriage and she writes about it on her blog.  She's quite brilliant as far as I'm concerned - her writing is full of profanity and it makes me feel like maybe without three kids and an alcoholic husband, my life isn't so terribly confusing.  Anyway, she posted this today:
and it really spoke to me, because that is EXACTLY how I feel on my days off.  It's super confusing because I feel like I'd go crazy if I had to work 5 straight days a week, but at the same time, the days when I have nothing to do are the days I feel the most lost and nutso.  Obviously I'm not getting divorced but I feel the same way when I've been busy for awhile and then suddenly have nothing going on.  Maybe days off for me are a bad thing?  It's really hard to say.  I was doing pretty well when I was at The Registry three days a week and then at Hapa for the other two.

I had a moment tonight when I felt the flare and passion for forensic science and death investigation tonight when I was explaining to Ethan my experience with NecroSearch, and my interests and ideas for internships and fleetingly remembered where my actual passion lies.  And it has nothing to do with getting my stupid Masters degree in Criminal Justice.  But if I could secure an internship somewhere, especially somewhere that interests me, I might have an actual chance at finishing my graduate degree and getting a job in the field of my choice.

I must drink too much because I can never remember what else I've written about on this blog...

My new therapist mentioned to me that I'm experiencing a huge loss with the realization that I might not be able to find a job in my field of interest.  I haven't really given it a ton of thought, but today I did think about it a little more, and especially after going into it for Ethan, I remember what it is and why I love it and it makes me realize what a big loss I feel.  The idea of going into that field has always excited me, and the idea of being stuck in a job - just a job, not a career - makes me absolutely miserable.  Which is what school is doing to me.  Training me for a job.

I'm rambling yet again.  Talking myself in circles and not really getting anywhere.

My positives for the day:
-I actually went to my psychiatrist appointment.  And I wasn't even late even though I showed up to the wrong place.
-I didn't sleep past 9am.  11am is just way too late to sleep for someone my age on a day off.  For some reason.
-I spent a good portion of my day snuggling with my adorable puppy.
-I got to see Ethan.  He's a good influence on me and my mood.  So far, anyway.
-I got to see my nephews and niece and got hugs and kisses from them.  Which are like magic.
-I watched a slew of videos of dogs reacting to their owners in the military coming back from an overseas tour.  Laughed and cried tears of joy because it was so cute and sweet.
-I had a good hair day after I showered.
-I got to watch Bones, Friends AND 30 Rock.  And I remembered why I love all three of these TV shows.

That's it for today.  For more on The Klonopin Chronicles: http://theklonopinchronicles.blogspot.com/

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Purposeful Boredom

I don't have much to write about today because I mostly just slept.  Of course I could have done about a bajillion different things because it was Saturday, but I really just wanted to do nothing.  So that's what I did.  The day of course, sped by, but that's okay because there's a whole day left tomorrow and Ethan keeps reminding me that there is probably all kinds of time with which I can finish the last 2 weeks of homework that I've been putting off and dreading.  Just thinking about it tonight completely paralyzed me.  I hate it so unbelievably much because I don't give a shit about it at all.  I could not possibly care less about these assignments right now.  What I want to do is just go to work, come home, spend time with my friends, have drinks, spend time with Phoenix, and not fucking worry about school work that means absolutely nothing to me in the long run.  It is literally ruining my life experience right now, and I can't even begin to express the hatred I have for it in words.  Although maybe I already have.

Anyway, that's it for today.  I didn't go to my parents house for dinner this week, which is fine.  Just different.  They didn't have the kids anyway, which is often the best time to go over there because then I can actually have grownup conversations with my parents without interruptions from the kids, but whatever.

I still feel semi-paralyzed by the idea of having to do homework so I'm going to just go to bed now.  No more Ativan today....

Friday, November 8, 2013

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster It's Friday

Soooooo, I didn't post anything last night.  That's because I was really, really, really tired.  Ethan took me to see Iron & Wine in Denver and we got home after 11 and I could hardly stay awake.  The concert was just about everything I had hoped it would be.  My favorite song, of all time, of all bands, is Such Great Heights, originally by The Postal Service (who I saw in May and who played this song), and redone by Iron & Wine (who played it last night and I about died of excitement).  So I have now seen my favorite song, sung live, by the two artists that play my favorite versions of it.  I could die happy.

That said, today was a little more rough.  Waking up was hard, and I made it into work the earliest of all the days I worked this week, but I got a lot of work done and got caught up on a lot of the work that I had allowed to pile up.

Anxiety washed over me at about 4pm, for no discernable reason.  It was kind of the same last night, right about the time I was getting ready to go to the concert.  Today I took a couple of Ativan, but I didn't feel them kick in, like, until I was driving home from work.  And at that point I just wanted to get home and lie down and do nothing, which is essentially all I have done since I got home.

I don't have much more to write about at this point, because Ethan is over and we're having a sleepover so we're gonna watch some Friends (even though he claims to hate it) and go to sleep and SLEEP IN.  Because waking up this week has entirely sucked.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

The One-Eighty

I slept for 13 hours last night.  I took three Ativan before bed just in case, and fell asleep quick.  When I woke up at 10am this morning I felt pretty much great.  I actually got up pretty much right away and got going.  I put in a load of laundry, and went straight down to start sweeping up the leaves out front that have been driving me crazy.  That took me into the garage that needed straightening up before winter.  We store our motorcycles in the shed in the wintertime but it's not time to get them in there yet, so I just cleaned around them.  Then I moved into the back yard and cleaned up the area outside the doggy door.  Two big bags of leaves later and also after having removed a tiny wishbone from the inside of my dog's mouth, I felt pretty darn good.

I ALMOST laid down to take a nap after such vigorous work but then I remembered that I needed to replace the headlight on my car.  That's out.  So I set about doing that.

It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  The entirety of the instructions were in my car's manual that it came with.  I had to unscrew like 10 bolts, with nothing but an adjustable wrench, two of which were like 6 inches deep in a place that was pretty close to unreachable and it took FOREVER to get them unscrewed.  I had to actually detach the top part of the grill of the car because if you look at a Chevy Equinox, the logo is on a chrome strip that actually extends across both of the headlight apparatuses (I thought for sure it would be apparati but I'm being told by the red squiggly line that apparati is not a word, but apparatuses is, so we're going with apparatuses).  So I finally got the new headlight in, and I was checking everything to make sure it was all working and I discovered that the fog light on the same side was also out.  For some reason, I did not look at the front of the vehicle PRIOR TO going to the car part store or I would have noticed this.  So I see that this bulb is also out and I had to stand there for awhile considering whether or not I wanted to wait until another day and attempt to remove everything I had already removed, again, and I decided that I did not.  But at this point, the front grill is hanging off the vehicle, and one of the headlight apparatuses is literally out of it's place and I can't drive anywhere.... At which point I realized that I own a second vehicle!  My motorcycle!  Except that I had put laundry into the washer and that included every pair of pants I own.  Literally.  I had NO clean pants, and all the pants I did have were in the washer, wet.  So I put on a pair of cargo capris and rolled them down as far as they would go, put my boots on, got my riding jacket and gloves on and grabbed the helmet and keys and wallet and car manual and went on my way (see?  getting ready to ride the bike is kind of a hassle because putting on the gear takes time).  At the end of the street I almost made a turn so that I didn't have to come to a complete stop, but there was a car coming so I had to stop kind of quick and the bike sort of leaned under me and I moved my legs to steady myself and ended up burning myself on the tailpipe.  Again.  Not nearly as bad as the last time, but it still hurts.  In the same spot too.

So I managed to go get the new fog lamp bulb and make it back home.  It didn't take me that long to replace it, and when I did, I stood back to look and make sure everything was working and I realized that it was a completely different color than the other fog lamp.  So again.  I stood there contemplating whether or not to change out the bulb on the other side simply so that the colors matched, or just leave it.  And so I decided to change out the other bulb so the color would match.  I proceeded to unscrew even the ridiculously difficult screw, and THEN realized that I didn't even need to remove the entire headlight apparatus to replace this particular bulb.  Somehow I missed that on the other side.  Then I replaced the bulb as before.  And all of a sudden all the lights on the front of my car work!  And they match in color!  I put my car back together, and cleaned up and by that time it was like 3:30.  I needed to go to the bank to get my rent money out and deposit the check I had sitting around from StubHub from selling the extra ticket I had from the Todd Helton retirement game.  So I drove over to my bank by my parents house, and decided to pop over there for a minute too.  I had my dad's circular saw in my car from cleaning out the garage, so I figured I'd return that.  So I stopped and talked to my mom for a few minutes, filled her in on Ethan and the flowers he sent me yesterday (yes!  He SENT me flowers.  That were delivered to my house!).  Then I came home.

I had a full chicken sitting thawed out in my refrigerator from like a week ago when I decided that I wanted to cook it and then didn't, so I decided to cook it.  I invited Ethan to come over and Braden too, and actually roasted some garlic and spread that out underneath the skin.  I cooked it on a bed of onions, carrots and apples.  I covered the inside with garlic salt, fresh ground pepper and basil.  Then I sprinkled the outside with it too.

I let it cook while we all talked and drank wine and the chicken turned out amazing.  A.  Mazing.  We ate and talked and talked and talked.  Braden finally went home and so Ethan and I went up and watched American Horror Story.

Compared to Monday this is a change of 180 degrees.  I haven't had this much energy and motivation in weeks.  WEEKS.  I just kept going and it never really even occurred to me to lie down and try to take a nap.  I feel good because I cleaned and I cooked and I fixed and I did some things that I needed to get done, and it feels really good to have been productive for like a full 12 hours at least.  I can't even remember the last time I got that much done, and it feels great.  I feel like I felt during the summer, or during last winter, and last fall and last summer.  Normal.  Or as close to normal as I know what normal feels like.  It was terrific and I almost don't want it to end.  What if tomorrow isn't as good?

I'm not going to worry about that tomorrow.  I will worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.  Because TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (thank you, Scarlett O'Hara).

Monday, November 4, 2013

Yet Another Bad Day

What I would love, is to be tranquilized, heavily, and to sleep until I feel better.  When I have days like today, I feel like I'll never feel good again.  Never feel normal again.

I drank a lot yesterday; that was a mistake.  This is the second time during this episode that I've awakened the day after imbibing too much alcohol and felt quite miserable.  I went to sleep by 11 last night and woke up at 2:30am feeling pretty crappy.  Nauseous and anxious and restless.  I felt like I very suddenly, though I was sleeping, could not hold still.   I then chugged a full Nalgene bottle of water, and laid still in bed watching TV until I felt sleepy again.  Luckily it only took me until about 4am.

When I woke up at 9am I felt pretty much the same, but a little calmer.  The first thing I did was go to get my newest prescription for more Ativan filled.  When I dropped it off the pharmacist told me it would only take about 30 minutes, but I never got a text from the pharmacy (that I usually get) saying it was ready.  I felt so anxious I could hardly stand it.  When I went back home I watched TV for a couple of hours trying to just get out of my head and calm down, and fell asleep at about noon.  When I woke up at 3, I again felt like I could not hold still.  My heart felt like it was pounding - not racing - really hard, and I still felt nauseous.  I went back to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, only to have them tell me that insurance says I can't fill a new prescription for it until tomorrow.  I walked around the store for a few minutes, trying to find something to grab that might help me to feel like I had something to look forward to, no matter how small.

I knew when I woke up today that I had three things that I should try to get done today: 1.) The rest of the October billing for Peggy, 2.) Send out purchases for work because they normally go out on the 3rd but the 3rd was yesterday, and 3.) Last week's homework assignment because I didn't do it last night.  It was like all I could think about all day long was how much I had to do, but how badly I didn't want to do any of it, but how I needed to get it done.  It was like the anticipation of having something - so many things - to do was just eating away at me, and yet I could not work up the energy or the motivation to do any of it.  Peggy emailed me at 3:30 asking when I was going to finish her October billing, so when I got home from the store, I just buckled down to get it finished.

Even though I got that much done, managed to chip away at what I needed to get done, I felt no relief at all.  I still felt - still feel - incredibly stressed out.  Like I can't handle what I need to do.  It's such a helpless feeling.  What I imagine drowning feels like, I suppose.  As though I can't grab anything to hold on to, in order to steady myself, or pull myself out of the water.  So out of control.

I'm not sure what is worse.  Feeling anxiety like this, or feeling sad the way I've been feeling.  Though they both make me feel terrible, each feeling makes me feel terrible in a completely different way.  I don't ever remember feeling this anxious ever, before, in my whole life.  At least not for such an extended period of time.  No doubt the anxiety I'm feeling today should at least begin to dissipate by tomorrow, but for now I feel very stuck.  It's a horrible feeling, and it makes me absolutely miserable.  Like I'm trapped, and there's nothing I can do about it.  And I cannot get out of my head.  I can't stop the thoughts that make me feel so incredibly inadequate, like no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to do what needs to be done.  And the thoughts just keep coming and coming.  I can't stop them.  I feel simply paralyzed.  The worse the anxiety gets, the harder it is for me to pull myself out of it.

I don't want to keep taking the Ativan when I feel like this.  I am not dependent upon it but I know that it does give me some relief when I need it, and that's a pretty valuable thing on days like this one, but I so worry that taking it, or relying on it, will prevent me from making any progress and being able to just tough it out the way I was forced to today.  I understand that I have the prescription just for when I feel like this, but I so worry that I will become dependent upon it and I so don't want to be.

I just want to feel like I can relax, and like I am capable of actually getting the things done that I need to get done.  And not being able to achieve that relaxation is just one more source of intense stress.  It just makes me feel worse.

I said it before but I feel so utterly helpless right now.  I don't know how to fix myself, and I can't bring myself to fulfill the obligations I have, which I keep thinking will help me to feel better.  The only thing I feel capable of doing is curling up into a ball on my bed.  But I can't even hold still long enough to do that.

The thought of having to go into work tomorrow makes me want to just vomit.  Thinking about how much I have to take care of, how much I have to do, seems almost entirely impossible.  Which again, just makes me feel worse.

I also feel like I'm not even writing about my honest feelings on here lately.  I feel like I am hiding so much of my true feelings because I fear my audience.  I haven't written that my involvement with my friend Ethan has gone further than friendship and I haven't written about my massive apprehension about it because I am trying hard not to over think everything.  I'm trying to just let his feelings for me be something wonderful in my otherwise current shitty existence.  I'm finding that it's much harder not to fight against my apprehension than I would have imagined.  Normally I just freak out, let myself freak out and run away.  I had to try really hard to let things just happen with The Ex, and even though it didn't work out in the end, I feel like not running away when I wanted to was a good thing.  Ethan is not my normal type, and he knows it.  I've told him.  But I haven't found success with my normal types anyway, so I'm trying to just go with it.  Let things progress with him.  Let him be nice and sweet to me.  But I'm really struggling with that.  And it's just one more thing on top of everything else that is stressing me out.  Unfortunately it's so easy to grab on to someone that cares and talks to me that I worry that I'm grabbing on just because of that.  And that's not fair to him.  But the thing is that I don't actually know what I'm doing because I'm trying so hard to just let it happen.

My face is broken out from stress and I can't seem to stop touching it which is just making it worse.  My neck and back hurt and are so tense all the time.  I can't seem to get my shoulders to relax.  The tooth I have the crown on needs a root canal but that's a $600 expense that I can't justify even though it hurts an awful lot most of the time.  I think my body is fighting off whatever cold is going around and I'm just bound to get really sick any day now.  I'm just uncomfortable in every possible aspect of my life and I don't know how to maneuver so that I feel any kind of comfort at all.  I feel like I'm headed towards a breaking point instead of making any significant progress.  It's two steps forward and then one step back, all the time.

I also feel like I very suddenly don't have any of my close friends at my back anymore.  I haven't talked to either Kate very much at all, and Tiffany has been at Disney World and now that she's teaching she doesn't have the time to talk to me very much.  Colorado Kate has expressed to me recently that because I struggle so much and so consistently that it brings her down, so I have stopped reaching out to her.  Other BFF Kate has an awful lot going on in her life and she doesn't do emotional crap very well and so I don't really reach out to her because she's not super receptive.  Even though I went over to my parents house on Saturday, I haven't really talked with them about anything.

I just feel so lost and so alone.  I wish I could find anything positive to focus my energy on for any significant amount of time.  And I'm confused because so much of the time I want to just be left alone by everyone but at the same time I want people to pay attention to me and help me feel like what I'm going through isn't going to actually kill me.

I don't know what to do.  At all.  I don't know how to resume any kind of normal function.  I feel like when I am trying so hard to be positive and make progress and take steps to feel better that I'm just covering up how I actually feel deep down which is mostly completely hopeless.  I have a lot of trouble just being honest with myself, I think.  When I am, I am just plain sad about it.

I gotta stop writing.  I feel like I'm just writing myself in circles and not doing myself any good.  And I sort of want to lay back down and do nothing for at least a little while longer before I force myself into unconsciousness.  Maybe I will be able to turn my brain off long enough to actually fall asleep.  

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Two Day's Worth of Posts

Well, it looks like I completely forgot to write anything last night.  I put in 5 hours of work yesterday, all told, and I think by 11pm I was tired of being on the computer and literally just did not think about writing anything.

Yesterday wasn't that exciting anyway.  I slept in until 11:15am and then when I did get up, the only thing I did was finish payroll for work.  When I finished that, I thought about doing a few things like sweeping up the leaves that are all over the place out front, and taking the dogs to the dog park, but then I decided that taking a nap was a better idea, so I laid down for like two hours.  Then I went to my parents house for dinner, spent some time with the kiddos, took little S girl with me to wash my car for the first time since camping, and that was that.  By the time I got home I was pretty tired but I needed to do some work for the attorney that I do some bookkeeping for on the side - mostly just time entries - so I got through the entire month of September for her and then did some extra housekeeping on a few accounts and called it quits.

This morning I had plans to get some breakfast with my friend Ethan, so I had to get up before 9am in order to get ready.  We had breakfast at a really cute, and very popular place in Old Town Louisville, and then decided to take the dogs to the dog park.  We took them for a nice long walk around the loop at the big dog park in Westminster, then took them to the do-it-yourself doggie-wash place on 287 on the way home because Nali was already so stinky and she had a lot of fun just laying straight down in the nasty pond at the park both when we got there and after we walked the long loop.  After watching both puppies down nice and thoroughly, we headed home and just sat and had some margaritas and talked while we watched Napoleon Dynamite in the background.  Before we knew it it was 4pm, so we went to the liquor store to get some more to drink (he makes a drink called an Angry Fireball - it's Angry Orchard cider and Fireball whiskey and it's DELICIOUS), and decided to try and get him all caught up on Walking Dead before the new episode tonight, which we did!

We ordered some Chinese food and Ethan ran to get it, and then spent the rest of the evening on Walking Dead and it was nice, and relaxing, and altogether just glorious.  I feel like I finally relaxed.

And now I have tomorrow off.  I don't have to go in to work, though I have some work to get done.  Since I didn't finish the billing for my attorney lady, I need to get that entered, and I have some Hapa work to get done too.  The weather is supposed to get yucky tomorrow so it's a good day to sleep in and just work from home.  I'm not going to get this week's homework done tonight, either, but I can do it tomorrow.

That said, I'm kind of exhausted from today and I really want to get to sleep so that I can try and wake up at a reasonable hour tomorrow and get a lot of stuff done, or at least start chipping away at it as best I can, since that's really the best I can do at this point...

Today was a good day, though.  I felt pretty relaxed most of the day, though when it hit me how much work I had to do for the attorney, and work, and homework, I had a momentary breakdown, but it passed because we were on our way to the doggie-wash place and I didn't really have a choice, and it helped a lot to have something else to focus on (washing the dogs), and I was able to move on from that.  Chinese food was super yummy.  Walking Dead was good.  Now I'm gonna snuggle into bed with my pup and get some good sleep.  Here's hoping this week is at least a step up from the last one.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

I think it's the Anticipation

Hopefully this will be a quick one because it's late, it's been a long day, and I'm tired.

I got up to get to work around 8am so that I could get as much done to prep for payroll as possible before the stores submitted it.  I ran into a problem right around noon when one of my managers called me saying that he'd received a call from Xcel Energy saying they were going to be shutting off the power at 4pm for non-payment of a bill back in September.  He gave me a number to call back to get more information.  They guy I talked to said that they did an update of their billing system and that we were supposed to have received notification of it, but that in doing this update, they were not able to honor the check we sent in for our September payment.  They said that in order to keep the power on, they needed payment TODAY, and they'd allow us to make a partial payment, but to do so, we would need to go to a specific location, like a Walgreens or a Circle K, and buy something called an Express Pass and load it with the money that we owed for payment.  Once the card is loaded we were to call them back with a registration number for the card and they'd keep the power on.  I freaked out on the guy, saying that they were shutting our power off because of a fault in THEIR system, and that now I had to go way out of my way to make a payment because I couldn't make a payment over the phone or online, or they were going to shut the power off to one of our restaurants?!  I actually said, "You have got to be fucking kidding me."  They said that I could only pay for this card thing with cash, and I said that I do not have access to cash, to which I was told that I had better get in touch with someone who did have access to cash. At this point I'm really starting to freak out because my boss wasn't in the office and I was on a really tight schedule for the day and wouldn't have time to go out and do this crap, and I didn't know what to do.  So I took a phone number so I could return the call, and then left my boss a message, essentially freaking out, and then called Xcel directly to see if I could verify that we were behind a payment.  I had checked our online statements and it said that we had $0.00 due and were all up to date with our payments, which I had already been fairly certain of since I'm the one that sends the checks out.  By the time my boss called me back I began to realize that this was probably a scam, since they were asking for a cash payment only and the phone number they'd given me didn't match anything I'd seen on the Xcel website.  We decided that it probably was a scam, but that I needed to get in touch with Xcel anyway just to make sure.  Sure enough, our account was perfectly fine and up to date on all payments.  So I told the woman that I had received a call from someone claiming to be Xcel asking for money, and she took down the details because apparently scams like this have been happening all over the country and they have received other complaints of similar calls from other customers.  She said that they're doing their own internal investigation and that I should perhaps call local law enforcement to relay the information because some departments are doing their own investigations.  That all taken care of, I called the number back that the scammers had given me and said that I was fully aware of what they were attempting to do, and that they could go fuck themselves, and that I'd already reported them to Xcel and would also be reporting them to the police as well.  They hung up on me.

So there was that little bit of excitement in my day, aside from the usual catastrophe that payroll always is.  I wasn't even able to get all of it done before I had to leave, so I will be finishing it up from home tomorrow morning.

I spent much of the day, including the drama with the phone calls, feeling like a basket case, full of anxiety about the upcoming evening.  I did the best I could to just breathe and ignore it, but ended up popping a couple of Ativan on the way home from work.  I got ready and headed to Denver.  I looked super cute if I do say so, myself (thanks to Meredi playing dress-up with me).  I used the valet parking at the restaurant and ran straight into my friend and his girlfriend.  Turned out there would only be 6 of us at dinner, and then 8 for the show, with a couple of extra tickets.  Dinner was spectacular.  I had a couple of glasses of champagne ($12/glass from a $15 bottle but oh well), and then I had broiled jumbo scallops cooked Oscar style with jumbo lump crab meat, over steamed asparagus and hollandaise sauce.  It was melt in my mouth oh my god mouthgasm delectable amazing.  I do so love scallops.  And crab.  And hollandaise sauce.

With a couple extra tickets, I decided to invite my friend Ethan, who I'd last seen when we went camping.  I've been keeping in touch with him a lot, talking over Facebook and stuff, and he'd mentioned wanting to see the show, so I asked the folks I was with if I could invite him if he'd pay for a ticket, which was fine.  So he popped down to Denver and met us for the show.  I had only heard that Book of Mormon was a funny show, that had won the Tony award for best show last year, and otherwise I didn't know what it was about.  It was kind of silly and absurd with undertones of seriousness, and many very musical qualities.  I think I need to let it sink in a bit, but it was really funny and I had a very good time.

The night itself was pretty nice.  It was a little tough to get conversational at first, but I relaxed into dinner and by the time we got to the theater and Ethan showed up, I felt pretty normal.  I'm really glad I made the decision to go, I am really glad I got to see my old friend, I'm really glad Ethan was able to come, and I'm really glad I followed through with my plans.  I always feel better about myself when I follow through with something.

Over all, though it was a long and incredibly emotionally stressful day, I did have a good time this evening and I'm tired and have lots to get done over the weekend.  I plan to sleep in tomorrow and get as much work done on the computer as possible so that I can do some other stuff around the house.  The place is filthy and needs a lot of attention.  I also need to wash my car and vacuum it out from camping, plus I have some homework to get caught up on.

And now it's time for bed.  Here's hoping things continue to look up.  I'm glad tonight is over and done with.