My anxiety is through the roof today. I had weird dreams. I woke up all discombobulated. I can’t put down my phone but I’m getting nothing done. I raged at my kids. My normal stuff didn’t chill me the fuck out (meditation, walking, water)…the kids just seem to be more EVERYWHERE-ER than they usually are and all of their shitty behavior feels like an indictment on my disorganization, laziness, weakness. I see them do something annoying, I yell at them, and then I feel guilty about both the thing they did and how I handled it. Being a mom is so dumb.
We’re going through some big changes (does that feel like a broken record when I say that? It does to me) and having difficult conversations (again, same), so, in addition to the global pandemic taking away everything we’ve ever known, the fear of unknowingly poisoning and being poisoned by all the people you love, the reckoning with racism that is probably going to get more violent and terrifying before it gets….better (please!?)…we’re also having grief and stress over our career/small business stuff.
Trying to “take each day one at a time” but they seem like they’re on an endless loop, so how do I even decipher beginning and end? When do I breathe? Is it safe to breathe?
Also, anxiety is fun because it also pops its little bastard head up when GOOD things are happening. I’ve had a dozen friends/family read the first draft of my book and they’ve been SO encouraging, thoughtful, helpful, just incredible…and I feel profoundly loved but also now….responsible to turn this book into something solid. It’s got “legs,” as they say….I don’t want to fuck it up. I owe it now. I want to make it something really, really relatable and moving and cool, but the more I WANT that the more I’m afraid I’ll spoil it. SO instead of just being like, “Weeee! I wrote a book! Go me!” my little anxiety imp is like, “Yeah-but-is-it-any-good-oh-God-what-if-it’s-good-it-could-be-better-don’t-make-it-worse-why-are-you-just-sitting-there-you-should-be-changing-everything-and-nothing! Write, dammit!”
So….I’m days behind on that calendar of self-care I posted recently- so tonight, I plan to ignore my entire family and push that guilty feeling way WAY down into my IBS, and do days 5–7….long bath with lavender oil, painting nails, watching a funny movie. I’ll have to do it all at once, bc there’s only so much time in the day, so assume the next post is about how I dropped an open bottle of nail polish and my phone in a full bathtub.
