I’ve been ill a lot lately. Last week was a migraine, this week I woke up covered in hives, a few weeks before that was I can’t even remember, and now I’ve got a sore throat that isn’t fading. Lovely.
There is a lot of frustration inside of me, with regards to health - my chronic issues, my mental illness, the things I never asked for.
What I am most frustrated with is my inability to be at work. Yes, I can work from home if I’m able, like I have been doing today - and I’m as productive at home as I would be in the office - but it’s important to me, to be a part of the environment. To work with my colleagues.
And I mostly fear that they lose hope in me, or find me weak, or don’t trust that I want to be there.
I’m fighting, and working, and playing my part the best that I can. It may not be normal or preferred - I would rather live without ailments - but it is the hand I’ve been dealt and I have to embrace it, or let it define me.
It is odd to fight nausea and hunger at the same time. Anxiety and migraines create nausea, yet hunger remains, and I sit for hours wondering what to do about it, because I want to taste food, but the thought of swallowing it makes me feel like puking.
Then when I finally do eat, I’m so hungry that I ignore the nausea until after I’m done, and it just feels that much worse.
I never puke, though. I avoid it at all costs. I have pills to stop the vomit from coming up, if I feel it. It terrifies me.
I’ve probably vommed three times in the past five years? It’s approximate, but you get it - I don’t like it. I can’t stand it. I avoid it.
Someone in the cubes behind me just farted really loudly and no one laughed and I really want to laugh right now.
Essentials. #pills #vitamins #anxiety
Googling ways to help overcome food anxieties and found my girl Elise’s blog post about cooking with anxiety/depression and it reminded me I’m not alone.
Sufficiently sucked into The Killing, mainlining Xanax, took one more than I’m used to and accidentally skipped my dose of cymbalta yesterday, so I’m feeling a lot of body/brain zaps but I’m pretty alright with it, especially because I have ice cream. And detective Linden. And Bella and I are preening ourselves, I chose turquoise nail polish, she chose a tongue bath. Maybe I will get my hair done tomorrow. Turquoise ombré, keep my natural color and let it fade into something alien and bright. I got this.
Manic anxiety days, little sleep, attempting to keep my eyes open until it seems right to go to sleep, but then I’ll keep going. I forget things. I want to lead a double life, or rather a double professional life. I love design but I want to write. Attempting to write a cohesive something after designing type and banners and making tiny tiny revisions to many different files for 8 hours straight does not end well. Tried to write about anxiety and triggered myself. I am so exhausted but I want to do so many things, as if everything I’ve accomplished over the past week wasn’t enough. I turn on myself so easily. There are 8 welts on my right shoulder and my skin is leaking. I miss people but I don’t want to put pants on.
Always aching, but not badly, or the kind of ache that you don’t know how to endure. Just there. I want purple hair, but I am afraid of what bleach and dye will do to a scalp riddled with flakes and scabs. There is a lot to do, and I want it done all at once.
After years of living in a hoarder’s nest my mom and sister are helping me clean and organize my room/studio tomorrow. I am sort of terrified so I will be spending my night in a state that is very not-sober, watching Skins UK, and keeping my hands busy with making things until I inevitably pass out. Because that is what I do.
“I won’t think about that now, I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
I feel insane. I’ve tried everything to turn off this mania and its just surging through me regardless. My body is just taking it and it’s exhausted and I am aching from it all but there’s no stopping it.
Maybe I’ll coast til morning. I’ve got work to do anyway.
I need distractions. I need to learn patience. I need to stop feeling like shit all the time, then really really fabulous, and then shit again. Why the theatrics? I will never understand why this happens over and over.
I painted my toenails pink. That made me feel like I could grasp something and control it. Just a simple thing. Nothing intimidating. Something bright to smile about.
I made a botched batch of kale chips earlier and they stink so bad.
Living in filth. Not much longer. It’s okay to ask for help. I just keep telling myself that.
I am trying very hard not to think about weight loss right now, because it triggers bad things. So I’m just acknowledging that and moving onward.
Because I actually feel pretty fucking fabulous when my body isn’t torturing itself, or when the way I feel isn’t out of my control. I really do.
When I’m not overanalyzing my food, I eat well.
When I’m not worrying about my weight, I feel good and treat myself better.
When I’m not feeling guilty about sitting at a desk all day, I make more time to move my body.
It’s logic.
Tell it to my brain to just let it alone.
I’m trying to own the fact that the “dry patch” that’s been on my thigh for months has been getting bigger and is definitely some kind of condition. At least I have a referral for what sounds like a really fab dermatologist. My skin flares up when the weather fluctuates, which is unfortunate, because Michigan weather is forever chaos. 76 today, 45 tomorrow. MY FRAGILE SHELL CANNOT TAKE THIS.
I’ve set a date with my mother for her to help me get my house and my hoarder’s nest of a room in order. I did that once before and canceled on her but for real this time, it has to happen. Cannot do it on my own.
Some people are good with spaces and objects and how to keep living environments functional; something to be proud of. They clean messes up immediately and make it all a priority. They don’t save meaningless things that collect dust.
I am not one of those people, I am the shameful, “lazy”, living-in-clutter kind. I’ve got mugs, cups, empty packs of camel no.9’s, and the sticky leftover carcass of a pint of butter pecan on my bedside table, among many other objects I don’t feel very proud about leaving there. But I don’t care enough to do anything about it right now.
My life is filled with many things. Cleaning is not a priority, but if I make a space I am proud of, maybe it will become one.
I think I am afraid of other things falling to the wayside. I don’t know. I’m afraid of everything.
Fucking storms and tornado season making me all uneasy and shit I hate hate hate it, nature is evil and unpredictable and I am not going to be able to sleep tonight unless I knock myself out. I am such a PATHETIC BLANKET BURRITO.
Trying very hard not to think about the trees falling on the house because they would definitely land straight on me I think.
Fuck, now it’s hailing.
If I die, someone make sure Jamie gets laid again at least once in his life, because he once said if I died he’d never be able to be with anyone else ever again and I actually believe him.
When I’m blurting things out in therapy I trip over my words a lot, and today I think I was talking about something that made me feel especially anxious so I sort of clenched my fist and pushed my fingers together the way I do all the time and I caught her watching my hands. Then I suddenly became aware that I had removed and re-inserted the bobby-pin in the back of my head about five times over the course of 30 minutes.
She often says things like “you were very anxious during that one session” and it always catches me by surprise - how well she can read me, and how easily I am read.
I don’t know why it catches me by surprise when I’ve always known that the heart-on-sleeve, impulsively impassioned properties within me need constant restraint.
When I am not mindful, I am careless.
I do not have the fucking patience for anything lately, except what I have to focus on at work and other various self-motivated agency projects.
I want so badly to be able to just relax and express my thoughts on all these things that float around my head. I’ve been trying to force it, but I should know better than that by now.
The way I articulate thoughts in word-form is completely dependent upon circumstance. It’s all or nothing. I don’t know how to put it on autopilot anymore because it just becomes nonsense that I can’t understand the next day. So I sit and I wait, as with everything else, and take advantage of impulse.
Thoughts continue to build in layers until they press at me from the inside and I figure out what to do with them.
The amount of things I would like to do tomorrow seems harmless enough now, but that moment I open my eyes, I will not care enough to know it will be good for me. But I know that I reread things in the morning that I wrote the night before, so I’ll write this now and say:
Just go to the fucking post office, mail out those boots that sold on Ebay, and be fucking done with it. It’s not a thing that needs to be drawn out for days (and sometimes weeks) on end, as usual. You’re not going to fuck it up and nothing horrible is going to happen. Stop thinking about all the reasons not to and think about how good it will feel when it’s off your fucking plate.
Licking it clean.
It would be nice, to be more truthful. I would like to have more control over my filter. As it is, I suppose I share enough.
