White knuckles

Yesterday I was given the gift of a day off in the middle of the week. I had all sorts of intentions for being as productive as possible. There is always so much to get done around the house and I usually fall very far behind simply because there is so little time to actually get it all done. I started the day by cleaning out the garage with my husband, something we have been meaning to do for over two weeks, but hadn't been able to get around to doing. When did I get so much stuff?! And why do I feel the need to have accumulated more things than actually fit inside of my home? What is even the point of that?! As we were going through boxes and getting rid of things and sorting the rest, I felt my anxiety rise up inside of me and with it, the inevitable self-hatred that always comes along with it. I feel this way a lot lately, actually. Just overwhelmed and lost and afraid and just plain low. It is hard to describe, but if I am being honest it has been going on for close to 18 months, maybe a little longer. I used to be able to power right through it, to ignore it when I felt it come on and make myself either busy or altered to avoid the crashing wave that always follows the onset of such feelings, but in recent weeks, none of that is working. My resolve and stubbornness seem to be on empty, I am running on fumes and there is just no escape. So there I am, standing in the garage having a total and utter freak out because of....what, exactly? I can't be sure, but internally I am melting right the fuck down, but on the outside I am totally calm and just discussing with my husband what should go where and what to tackle next. In that moment, I know I should speak up. I know I should ask for help or support or something, but I don;t because I just don't know where to start. What would I even say? "Hey baby, this is a little off topic, but I am losing my fucking mind over literally nothing right now and I fear I might literally drown in a pool of my own stress sweat and second, so could you please toss me a life preserver?"? Yeah, it just doesn't work any way I try to think about wording it, and so I just focus on my breathing and try not to look like a frightened animal while we sort through all the garage junk. We managed to accomplish our organizational goals before the heat of the day chased back into the house, and I started to calm down a little bit. Not a lot, mind you, but a little.

When we got back inside, I looked around at all the little house chores I needed to do and immediately the anxiety started to escalate again. Hubby asked me what my plan was and I told him I was planning on cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry and clearing off the dining room table which is always, despite my best efforts, covered in an assortment of weird objects that never really seem to actually belong anywhere else. He told me that was WAY more than he was planning to accomplish and suggested we say fuck it and spend the day watching Netflix. My husband was kind enough to help me build a couch fort in the living room and we spent literally the rest of the day and most of the night watching House of Cards together, just getting lost in the story and eating snacks and generally just being together. My gratitude was so strong that I found myself almost crying a couple of times. But then again, I am pretty much always almost crying these days for one reason or another. At least this time I knew what the reason was. Why is it so hard for me to look this man in the eyes and tell him how completely bent out of shape I am these days? This impossibly perfect and kind person who clearly loves and understands me wouldn't judge me or shame me for my internal mess, I know that in my heart, but something always keeps me from saying how I am feeling. See, often it is the case that I can't articulate exactly what is wrong, which is usually a pretty good excuse for not even trying, but yesterday, I knew the problem. Objectively, I do know the signs of a panic attack, and I think it is pretty safe to say that is what was happening to me. I know this because I come from a long line of people who suffer from one form of acute anxiety disorder or another and I have watched them all struggle to manage either through just white-knuckling it through the terror or by self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, both of which I have tried and both of which don't seem to actually work, so I am pretty much over these methods of coping since they are so ineffective. See I can write this all here, but why can't I say any of it to the people who love me without already being in total screaming, crying, melt-down mode, I just don't know. 

And then it hits me. I can't say anything because if I say something, if I admit that there is something fundamentally wrong with my internal clockwork, then we might have to address it, give it a name and start to deal with it. And I see the way people deal with it and I just don't want to. I don't want to talk to strangers, I don't want to take drugs, I don't want to share any part of myself with people who I don;t know and who aren't really interested in knowing me. As bad as the constant anxiety and terror is, it isn't as scary as the thought of really facing it the way people do, or at least the way people seem to be expected to. I don't want to be grouped into all of those people on social media who are constantly posting about their "anxiety" as though it is a friend of theirs, or some sort of weird additional member of their household. You know the people I mean. The people who you only tacitly know but whom social media connects you with and all of a sudden these people who you might not even recognize at the grocery store because you've only met once are pouring their guts out all over their timelines, desperately seeking attention with an endless stream of emotional memes and casually discussing their Xanax use. I don't hold anything against those people, and I'm not saying they aren't really experiencing some kind of serious disorder, but it just makes me so damned uncomfortable and half the time it looks like a celebration of the thing, and truthfully, I just fucking hate it. I hate everything about it. I don't want to be grouped in with that cultural phenomena that I just don't understand, but I don't know how to avoid it if I start to speak up. I mean, really, what can I say? "ok, yeah, I freak out a lot, but trust me, I was anxious and completely miserable way before it was cool..." UGH. And so, here I am, blogging about it hoping that might help enough to get me through this... whatever this is. Which, if I am being honest, doesn't make me any better than the group of attention seekers on Face Book that I so badly don't want to be a part of. I hope tomorrow will be a better day.