Admissions

You may have noticed that I've been having some anxiety lately. I haven't been totally happy and I've come to think that's my fault because I've let go many of the things that make me happy. Amateur move right there.

So it's been a slow crawl into crazy town, lemme tell ya.

For one, I'm not in therapy anymore so it's not like I have a coach in my corner keeping an eye out for any stumbles. Not that I want to need a therapist for the rest of my life, but I was maybe not ready to lose that help. When I was in therapy, I was doing great! I was making progress and healing and learning and growing. I had cut my visits down dramatically. Also, I used to take anti-anxiety drugs (more on that in a minute), which my therapist helped me taper off of. By the time I moved to Portland, she was confident I'd be fine.

Except I didn't keep up all the good skills I learned there. I wasn't nurturing myself. I wasn't continuing my personal growth at all. And my anxiety just popped right back up.

I have to say it was a bad sort of manic feeling. Not manic exactly, because I wasn't swinging from the rafters one minute and then hanging myself from them the next (sorry to make light of that). But my anxiety episodes would feel sort of manic, like out of control. Once I felt it, I couldn't stop it. And the more I tried to stop it, the worse it got.

I'm positive, too, that a lot of this is due to once again putting my heart on the line and really letting myself fall. Now, we can't blame any of this on him, because he is a fucking trooper for dealing with my array of shit and I wouldn't blame him if he ran the other fucking direction, leaving flaming tracks in his wake. But he seems to love me, so he pushes back. Which, in the moment, makes me feel awful, but in truth, is probably good.

Nonetheless, heart outage is scary yo. And he'll meet my family in like two weeks which is MAJOR scary. Not that I'm worried they won't like him, because they will and even if they didn't, I wouldn't care. It's mostly that I just want things to go smoothly, but also because this is a big deal. Big. For me, anyway.

So yeah, I can't believe I didn't see all that anxiety coming and that I was arrogant enough to think I could just manage it on my own.

And yeah, the drugs. Xanax helped me in the past. A lot. I could never take a full dose anyway, because I felt like a damn zombie. Plus I never wanted to stay on it because, HELLO! my mother is a prescription drug addict and putting chemicals into my body for extended periods of times scares me more than I can express. But I haven't taken any in almost two years and I was doing splendidly.

Until personal demons and twelve o'clock!

Yeah.

And I've been acting irrationally for absolutely no good reason and out of the damn blue. Well, not totally out of the blue. There's always a trigger, but it's never anything to get worked up over. The real me would just get annoyed and then decide whether it's worth worrying about or just letting go. I'm a big fan of letting things go because life is just too damn short and I spend enough of it worrying anyway.

But last night, I was a crazy bitch. I flipped out on Hot Pants because he fell asleep. Yup. Criminal right? Sleeping is bullshit. How dare he. Sarcasm font.

I can't believe he didn't dump my ass right then. Who needs a crazy bitch flipping out on them for stupid shit? Nobody, that's who. But he didn't.

And I didn't see it right away, but after an insomniac night of sort of loathing myself and wondering if I'd gone off the deep end (Which I'm told is a sign of sanity. Crazy people never wonder if they're crazy right?), I sort of had enough. It wasn't quite an epiphany, but more of a feeling of being fed up with my own behavior.

So I called my old therapist today (lard love her) and had a long talk about everything and she reminded me about what I used to do to find outlets and feel happy and creative and nurture myself. She also talked me into trying some herbal remedies that have worked for some of her other patients for controlling anxiety and mood. So I'm gonna try that. Everyone cross your fingers.

Plus, I'm getting benefits at Le Job and so I'm going to find a new therapist ASAP.

And of course I apologized to Hot Pants and he forgave me, like the awesome guy he is. I only hope he acts crazy one day so I can return the favor. Wait, I take that back.