Sad

I feel myself sinking again. My husband just started graduate school, and I'm left feeling like I'm only the provider, the rock. I'm not "moving the plot forward" - just holding in stasis until he graduates (he has 62 weeks of classes to go, we figured out).

Combine this with stupid family drama - how they can suck me in from 2,778 miles away is beyond me - and things feel bleak.

And the weather's still so hot.

At least I have my sewing. Lots of sewing, lately.

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.

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.

Question #10

#10 - Who do you secretly envy? Why?

Oh boy. Um...

• Women with slender legs, particularly those who are able to successfully wear "skinny" jeans like these (or, really, any woman who can find pants that fit her entire leg, not just parts of her lower body at any given time):

• People with jobs they enjoy. My husband's working on becoming one of those people, but I don't know that I'll ever get there. I'd love a job in a library, or doing some other kind of job that requires an OCD level of organizational skills.

I guess most of my envy centers around people who are in control (of their jobs or their...thighs?). I feel out of control of so many things, sometimes.

Sometimes I feel like I just want to disappear. It comes on out of nowhere - like when I feel like no one needs me. When Jeff watches a show without me, when something good happens for one of my friends, or whatever.

So insecure.

I didn't even have a bad day. I have bad hours. Relatively good mood all day, and then now I just want to curl up and cry.

I don't know why. I don't know.

I don't know why I don't know.

Linked!? Woot

I got some link love over at Faster Than Forever this morning, so I figured I should probably actually post something, since I've been pretty neglectful of this blog lately!

Springtime is here, and as usual, my brain has calmed down a little...until last night, and today, apparently, when my anxiety has cranked up to 11. I posted about it at my other blog.

I'll try better to post here more often... but since this blog was more for emotional crap, well, I guess it's better that I haven't felt the need to, huh??