what it's like living with constant, nagging anxiety.

It's funny, because, until recently, I didn't even realize how scandalous anxious I am, on a regular basis, ABOUT EVERYTHING.  But, no, really.  Everything.  (Normally, for instance, I would attach a "-ly" to the end of scandalous, but I've chosen not to, here, because it reminds me of how people spoke in the early part of the 1900s.  Which I dig, and sort of don't mind evoking on a miniature scale right now.  Even though there's zero context, it makes no sense to do so because I'm not telling a story remotely related to something from that era.  I just -- have a fondness for old things, I guess.  And the anxiety prays on me and says, but you can't just PUT something like that out there and not explain your reasons.  Although, generally, I do just that, at least in my blog, but sometimes also IRL, and I don't explain myself at all, but then I writhe and rage inwardly.)

Along those same lines of explanation-owing, though that's not necessarily true, I just feel too anxious otherwise to deny the urge to explain everything to very minutest detail, I couldn't sleep just now because I feel so anxious about getting back to sleep -- allow me to give you a minor amount of backstory, er, preface, to get the picture:  My son is still having accidents, at night, approximately once a week.  Sometimes oftener, sometimes less often, but it turns out, math-wise, to kind of be a once-a-week deal.  Thereabouts.

So this morning's accident came at 5:13 a.m., and I was already restless because my bedroom was too warm, but if I'd got up to open the other window, or even just to turn on the fan, I would've woken up too much, so I was doing my best to avoid waking, but then I heard Jack start to whine and realized it was too late.  After he'd gotten changed and I remade his bed (a thing I don't usually do without a lot of help from him, as I'm trying to help him learn that, even with accidents, he's got to assist in remedying the situation), I crawled back into bed (but not before I'd gotten my share of grousing in and had my husband point out that I was getting yelly, which didn't aid in making me feel exactly calm), and knew I was done for.  So I lay there for a minute and wrote never-to-be-written blog posts in my head, as per usual, until I remembered, HELL.  I could just go and write one.  So I got up and began the thing.  (And proceeded to get distracted by headlines and celeb-couple photos and other shit I don't usually look at, but DUDE, it's 5 in the fricking a.m.  "Usually" goes out the window, I'd say, at such a stupid hour.)

It occurs to me, while writing, that one of the many reasons I can include in my explanation to self of why I quit blogging for awhile, why I always try to quit, not just blogging, but writing altogether, is that it no longer soothes the anxiety.  It once did, just as everything does initially, but it no longer does.  Rather, it incites it.  The very thought of writing anything beyond a laundry list is a menacing one.  I quake in its lion-eye'd gaze.  And so goes my blog, down the crapper, because I do anything I can to avert the gaze of that which makes me anxious.  I do, really and truly, hate to pine, and it is seemingly what I do best.

Another thing that gives me no end of anxiety-worthy trouble?  Friendship.  I'm lousy at it.  So I do the very best thing I can:  I avoid it.  I quit it.  I get out before I can get quit on.  I would like to take this opportunity, then, to apologize to any and all who I've done it to in the past, as well to those whom I may do the same discourtesy in future.  I really don't fucking mean to.  I just inadvertently shut people out so they can't beat me to it.  Isn't that sad?  It's fucking sad.  I'd rather, though, than sit around after every horrid encounter, no matter how lovely in the moment, wondering what decibel of offensive I managed to hit for that particular friend/foe.  It's much more soothing to the inner core of anxiety that is my rotten, fetid, seedy middle to simply circumvent the entire exchange to begin with.  And so - I miss out.  On friendships.  Rich, beatific friendships.  And my son suffers, because he doesn't see me interact with friends, he is disallowed the side-benefit of being adopted-nephew to my not-friends. 

The thought of which, needless to say, gives me endless anxious turmoil to bat about at the awful, dark hours of bedtime. 

Insomnia sucks, but especially so when the time isn't even put to some other good use.  Instead of using it to allow the self-loathing to take deeper hold.  Which is where I excel. 

I am, in fact, so gifted in the realm of anxiety, I have to wonder:  is that a skill I can apply to a job?  Because if it were, I'd be aces.

(This entry has not, by the way, soothed the anxiety, as I'd hoped, thinly, but knew, more thickly, that it would not.)

(Also, I am so busy resenting myself about the friendship thing that I can't think of anything else anxiety-related to say.  Though I realize this blog is, once again, missing its right name, which should really be:  I confess.  As confession seems to be the one avenue to mild relief from the all-consuming anxiety beast in my belly.  It only lasts a short while, but it's better than taking the anti-anxiety medication I no longer have any of, because I'm too nervous to contact the doctor about the whole thing because that would require explanation and sorting-out of shit, an anxiety-intensifier if there ever was.  Plus I'm lazy.  A right capital sloth.  And the only other relief from anxiety is feeling sleepy, but even not sleeping well doesn't gift me with that always-too-quick-to-evaporate yawning glory of fuzzy-headed bliss the way it used to.  

And I like ending my blog posts on a hopeless note, as self-derision does seem to provide a slight salve for the angst, however momentary.

So, basically, I'm fucked.)

Comments

[Kyla]

You're fabulous and I wish you were around more.

[Kathi D]

It may not help to know this, but I totally get you. Last week I was one day after running out of my anxiety med, and it was Friday, and I called the pharmacy for a refill, and there were no more refills, so they would contact the doctor on The Next Business Day, which would be Monday, by which time I would be sobbing and drooling all over my dirty t-shirt (having not changed clothes for days by then) and my husband said, "Why don't you call the doctor and ask him to call the pharmacy?" as if that were just the easiest thing ever. Doesn't he know that I can't call the doc because he will ask when I'm coming in, and I don't know, and I don't want to talk about it?

[Black Hockey Jesus]

I hate how the doctor's all "It's been a week. That was supposed to last a month." They make it so stressful.

[jaelithe]

Ah, I have the postcard from this place.

[Mignon]

You don't have to talk to someone every other day to be their friend. I consider you my friend, and shit, we just had coffee that once. So you can pull the Japanese sword out of your guts about that one...

[Lucy]

Val Swift you ably describe my experience and with such detail that I feel some portions should be tattooed onto me. Alternatively, I need to tell you, but ever-so-precisely, that you are not crazed, or perhaps you are, but that others, like me, are crazed in that way, as well. True anxiety is quite uncomfortable, isn't it? Read: awful. Sometimes exercising helps, if it's difficult, like yoga with strenuous positions and I am so busy pretzeling myself that there is not much time for the many little creeping thoughts to get in there. Looking forward to reading more - often I try humor in my writing but I'm rather irreverent. It may not be your thing.