Monday, June 20, 2011

Question 12

Question 12: How do you sabotage yourself?

I set myself up to fail, quite honestly. I make goals that are ridiculous - I will work out every day or else! I will only do this task on these days when I have $x in my wallet and only on full moons! I'm very all-or-nothing.

I've been trying to get better. I make to-do lists, but I'm trying to get better about accepting the fact that I cannot do everything. This month, for example, I can't complete all the things under the "home improvement" section because my contractor is on vacation until the end of the month, so that section will get moved to July's list. I also try to make them "done lists," adding things that I've done to the list as I go so that I feel more accomplished at the end of the month.

((If you're a new reader, the list of questions I've been working from can be found on this blog, here.))

Question 11

Question 11: What do you really want? But really...

To have a kid, preferably a boy (maybe two?), and stay home and raise it/them.

To run a used book store, allowing me to indulge my passion for reading AND my OCD tendencies. Also, to finish all the books on my current to-be-read pile.

To move away from Chico, preferably to a town near a beach that also has a zoo. Like San Diego (beach + zoo + Sea World = win!).

And most importantly, to be rid of the anxieties.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

There are days

There are days when I think I am never going to get better. When the slightest thing - a comment, a photo, a phone call not received - can send me reeling, crying, and eventually into a panic attack that will only go away if I sleep - not just a nap, but all night, eight hours of recharging from the emotional drain and the feelings and the self-hatred that comes with them.

There are days when I have to listen to the same sad songs over and over, like The Band Perry's "If I Die Young" or Miranda Lambert's "The House that Built Me" or any of a number of Alanis Morisette songs, like "Your House" or "Not as We" or "Mary Jane." Or maybe put them into one terrible iTunes playlist called sadness so they loop and I cry without drawing too much attention. When I was in high school, I'd listen to "Your House" over and over, when it was difficult, because it was on the Jagged Little Pill CD as a hidden track, it's just past five minutes in, I'd listen and sing loudly after school until my sister got home at 3:40 or so and I had to start helping her with her homework or at least make her generally behave herself.

There are days when I feel like I'm no better than I was the day I had my first panic attack, the day when it took everything in me not to start sobbing on the drive home from work (which at that time was only a mile); the day when it took all I had not to drive off the road, into someone, intentionally, to hurt them, so I could go to jail and sleep.

There are days when I don't feel any of this, and no one would ever know that I had ever felt that way.

But on the other days, days like today, I know that I will never be alright. I will never be the happy-go-lucky person I'd give almost anything (even perhaps a limb) to be.