Days of Turning; Change

I woke up this morning with a terrible kind of anxiety. Well, I don’t know if there are kinds, but I had it badly. And I was rolling around with stress dreams that were so anxious and difficult, yet I was too lazy to want to get up.

The dog, Emma was even right next to me, like a person in up and down position in my bed, practically taking up MY space. It was weird. They say you shouldn’t let a dog feel TOO much like a person, because they take you over. I can’t think of too much else that would show that the dog has taken over! That just added to my discomfort.

I am having a hard time adjusting. It really is an adjustment too, to go from getting up everyday and working and putting the ‘face’ on, not just your makeup and clothes but looking like a normie when you are person that just quite isn’t, to one that one that wants to nearly hide in their home and just be happy. They may even require two different mindsets, which when the day gets going I think I handle okay, but the starter is such a doozey, I could have hid in bed all day, if it wasn’t excruciating.

I think about where this all comes from, this doubting of a decision I made and just feeling to my core that something is SO WRONG. Is it what other people think of me? So I wonder if in some subconscious part of me, am I bothered by the paper and their apparent judgment of me? Is that enough to give me monster stress dreams and incapacitate me into almost not moving or being able to deal? I will not bluster and be angry or cut, I’m desperately trying to get it out and figure where to go from here. I have ideas about my life and where I want it to go. I believe I can cut down the stress and be a more happy person. And so it is worth it to me to examine.

So worth it, that I LIVE to type this out on the computer and relieve the anxiety and think through my thoughts. I felt the strong need to have a cigarette first thing to relieve the stress, and I did so. Understand, my family really strongly looks down on my smoking, so that is going against the grain right there. But they cannot get inside my head and take away this anxiety. I have found that I must do it, even if to them it is unconventional or stinky, unacceptable, and the worst one bad for me. I don’t want to be on it forever, but for some reason I felt better after it. I will have to analyze it out of my life another day. So cigarette first and then to type. I don’t feel that scary ‘something’ anymore at the moment.

I am not bitter about the way the paper treated me when I left but I do feel perhaps I was judged. And I am not mean or upset or about that, I just figure it was their choice. Their reaction seemed to be ‘how could you leave us? And if so just go, because we are better.” I know that might be necessary in a work sense, like we’ve got work and you have just left us to do it, and I didn’t think I was buying into being judged, because I look at their reaction and it was weird, but I figure okay, that’s them, let them have it and I don’t say it meanly here either, but rather to say what happened. But I think in my own heart I question myself. And that fighting inside is causing massive anxiety, so much that I started right back smoking on Tuesday. And this was before I got the SS letter.

Its all about change. Why are death of a loved one and moving high up on the list of big time stressors? Because they are about the largest changes that happen in a person’s life (that list is big, please don’t think I am minimalizing it). And I hope this is just the beginning of me figuring out how I want my precious home life to be, organizing it (that is overwhelming and exhausting, but I am aware of that) and making my world better.

I chose to leave the work world. I don’t want to go back. (I say that yet a part of my gut says, Wait a minute!) and it makes every bit of sense that I would have issues and need to work through them. But it can just be so painful. I hate anxiety, its just rotten. Its funny how it mostly improves for me after I get up and deal, but that doesn’t take away how real it is, even though I think I like to just forget about it.

Are they right? Am I some kind of ‘loser’ for leaving? Unfortunately, it’s a question that I’ve been asking myself. I think I could be a lot better about it, but I have been emailing a person back there and she keeps asking me, “Have you gotten a new job yet, or getting ready to do medical transcription?” I feel like the answer to that is the big ‘un hunh, so THAT’s what she’s doing’ or at least the information needed to make the big judgment on me. Her email’s are a thorn in my side. I like her, but how much can we continue to talk about when I won’t admit that I’m disabled and worked part-time for a reason? Yet, she’s nice, I think, and I don’t want to just cut her off.

I see with this illness there are moments when I doubt my personhood way more than I should. I have good days, and I have been having many, (while I was working, go figure) where I don’t even question what seems to be silly things like that. This change in my life, and for me it is a big one, just channels right into these fears. As a disclaimer, I am not truly usually so worried or overwhelmed, but it seems this week I go from a scared crying embryo unable to cope to doing really well and being adult and accomplishing things and proud of every little thing, switching from one day to the next. It’s not just the ‘change’ (work to home) it’s other things too, like the Social Security problem which I would have to detail at another time. Perhaps for normies, this could all be handled much smoother. But these things for me tap in the bipolar. If I don’t keep things under control, if I overwhelm myself too much I could end up in the hospital.

We joked, Husband and I, wouldn’t it be nice if we had the money to send me to some ‘spa’ somewhere, as what I need is a big rest not drugs as the ‘lil’ place behind our local hospital (my name for their combo psych ward/drug, alcohol treatment place) likes to do, would be a good place for me. I am so petrified of SS in general that I am afraid to say the innocuous little joke we had. But luckily he knows only too well that this is a difficult time for me and is very supportive and he even pointed out how important it is to take things easy and not overwhelm. I guess for the paper they don’t know anything about me except as a work horse and they don’t care what happens when the work horse needed to go out to pasture. Luckily I ended up with loving people and not the glue factory!

This would be the moment on my blog when I would be putting it out there to see what other people think. I write to soothe my soul, but then I end up with copy. It seems too delicious of a situation to not put out there. But then I think, why can’t I have less serious stuff to put up (well its serious to me) BUT it is me, and I don’t feel that voice in my gut like its so inappropriate. Yeah, put it in outerspace. What real good it will do, I do not know. I think maybe I will look back and see these days as a crux in my life, the turning point. It certainly deserves words, actually for me it screams for words. Sincerity is the best form of me. This is today’s torture, for your perusal.