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Back? All ready now? Grab a joe (or a tea) and let me take you on a tour...
It is Sunday morning... usually, the beginning of a new week. For me, the end of my work week. I am tired and sleepy, and my legs feel like I have been doing squats for hours on end (I was taking pillows up and down three flights of escalators yesterday because our elevator is (yet again) broken; always quite the workout).
Do you ever have a moment, day, hell - even a week, when you have so much going on in your head that you can't think straight and all you want - you would give everything for - an hour of silence. An hour of nothing - no worries, no thoughts, no oh-shit-I-forgot ..., nothing, nada, nyet, nein.
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I wrote the above on Sunday morning before work. I knew then that it was an off day. Was it because of my period? What was making me uneasy? I wasn't sure, but I went to work. I clocked in at 12pm, and clocked out again at 1:30pm. I had started having an anxiety attack and could not get control over it. I tried; I went outside and took a break and had a smoke and tried to calm my breathing down... to no avail. I couldn't get out of the store fast enough. I even accidentally left my only lighter in my apron and wouldn't go back to get it. I was able to tell my immediate boss what was going on, and although I could tell he didn't understand it, he was sympathetic and knew me well enough to know I wasn't screwing around. I finally made it home, to the surprise of my mother (whose immediate question was "did you get fired?"), who also didn't get what the hell was going on. I may look calm when I'm having an anxiety attack, but if you look closely enough, you can see that I am almost vibrating and still at the same time... it's like I can watch myself from outside of myself but I can't stop what it is that I'm watching. Which makes an anxiety attack for a control freak even worse.
I ended up eating, going to bed, getting up to eat again, then back to bed for the night. The vibrating is barely coming to an end now. I am overwhelmed with a lot of things going on in my life right now. I think not having an anxiety attack until now is impressive in and of itself. My last major anxiety attack was three years ago, and I actually thought I was having a heart attack. I wasn't, and thankfully, this time, I didn't have the chest pains that I did then. I know myself well enough to know that when this happens, I have to step back and figure out what the cause/s of the anxiety are and get a grip on them as soon as possible. I spent almost all day - off and on, in and between doing other things - writing it out specifically about work. I was going to attach the link to the six page results of that labor, but I cannot figure out where to post a text attachment, and I don't particularly want it posted to GoogleDocs so that it can be read widely (even though I changed the names of everyone/thing). I'll spare ya'll the gritty details. But the synopsis is this: I have had enough. The straws that broke the camels back were when I walked into work on the clock. Immediately, I was inundated with responsibilities that were not mine, with the insinuation that I had caused them. Then, while opening the registers, a lead - not my lead, so not my boss; not an Assistant Store Manager, just another lead who was not over me in any way, shape or form - decided to assert her "authority" and "politely" ream me about leaving grapes at the cashwrap from the night before. The candy she was ok with, it was the grapes she had a problem with (size-wise, they were the same size; one was a fruit and good for you, one was pure sugar and not so good for you). WTH?!? I carried on, putting away go-backs, opening the registers, starting in on the inundating list the ASM that started in at the beginning of my shift had given me. And then... it just started. The instant nausea/butterflies/jitters in my stomach, the sharp head pains, the shortening of my breath, the increase in my heart rate. The feeling of impending doom that was going to befall me if I did not get out of the building and right then. So I did, as fast as I could, without actually walking out on the job. I will have to take 5hours of PTO to make up for the time lost. I did offer to come back in the next day and take care of the list from hell so that it would be done before the "Big Corporate Visit" on the First.
So, that sums up the actual attack, but tells you nothing about why. And it's always the why that's the important part. The big part, I think, is probably my truly disorganized life. I live in a garage closet. I do not begrudge it (anymore). I actually like that my room is unattached from the house and that I can have my babies sleep with me without having anyone bitch about the dogs being in the house. The problem is that it is a mess. Not a little messy, a little disorganized, but a MESS. I have clothes everywhere, and have been saying that I am in the process of cleaning out my closet for the past six months - I have gotten no where on that. Outside of my room is a ginormous tree that sheds incessantly and creates a huge mess, along with the birds and mice and opossums that also live in the tree. I gave up throwing out my cig butts into an ashtray because ... I don't know why. And everything that I have is either there or in various parts of my room or my closet. My mother has a thing about my stuff being in the house, as in, it's not allowed to be in the house. If I don't take it out of the house, she will A) have a royal shitfit or B) take it outside or C) throw it away or D) all of the above. As a result, everything has been relegated to this little area outside of my room (which is also outside of the laundry room; my room is a closet in the laundry room, which is in the detached garage behind the house. Hope that all makes sense). That, I know, is a huge part of the anxiety. I know things are possibly being ruined in the ever-changing weather we have going on this summer (seriously? wtf is up with that?!), plus all of the tree debris, and do you see where this leads to anxiety???
Let's see... I think my monkey's adoption was complete in the past month, but don't know for sure. And while that in and of itself is another long winded deeply personal blog post for another time, it is a source of anxiety that creeps up on occasion and really headbutts me in the gut.
My mother has been needy lately, and not just a little bit, but a lot. As in she needs to blame me for everything that does or doesn't get done around the house (which can also be done by my two brothers, and is nothing new. But it gets old after a while). As in she needs me to keep track of her jobs and who gets paid what and when and how often (nevermind that I created a system for her to use on her Kindle so that she could do it herself, but "she's going to pay me to be her secretary"). As in she needs me to be supportive of whatever it is that she is doing, but the kind is not to be expected.
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Ok, it's now Saturday morning, and I am determined to finish this post up while I have color in my hair (gotta keep up on those roots!!). The above (lol, deja vu??) was written on Monday night, and I have struggled since then to finish this post. I don't know why; I was able to pick up a seven hour shift, which more than made up for the time off I took on Sunday, so that was Tuesday; Wednesday I worked the morning shift; Thursday I was off, but mom kidnapped me to get our mani/pedis out of the way (every 2-3 weeks, because we both have insane cuticle extra super horrible growth around our toenails, which feels just as painful as an ingrown nail, so we HAVE to keep up on our toes at the least), and I trimmed and added some layers to my hair (plus Helen hooked me up with more coffee!! woohoo!!), which also inevitably turned into us going to her job at the laundromat, and not getting home til nine:something because we also stopped and ate dinner; Friday, well, Friday is ALWAYS errand day for me because it's payday, so I started at Alice's garden, ran errands, changed and went to work. I fell asleep in front of my laptop last night thinking of what I was going to write. And now it is Saturday morning, and I have to get ready for work and I know I will be too tired to write when I get home.
There are other issues which are consuming me with anxiety, but that will have to be a part two to this post, mainly because of time, but also because I haven't completely untangled them into individual parts that I can break down. So, I will end part one here, and leave it with:
TO BE CONTINUED... (dun dun DUN, sorry I couldn't help it, lol)
xoxox Desilu
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