A Bad Set Up….

Who else feels like their anxiety makes them clumsier or more likely to make stupid mistakes?

I feel like that today, like it’s something I’ll never get rid of. And that scares me. I’ve been in orientation for the last two days for a new job and I feel like such a fool for the mistakes I’ve made that no one else has. Like this morning, I felt like a target the moment I stepped into the meeting room (that’s how it always feels though, when people are already in a room). I never had a second to take in my surroundings before I was told to sign in, causing me to feel as though I should rush for what ever reason. So I neglected to look at the sign just above the board that said ‘PRINT your name’ and I signed in with a signature. Now, I should have left it a signature, entered my time and left it at that, but no. My stupid mind thought it better to cross out the mistake, print my name in tiny letters then squeeze in my time somewhere near it all. It looked cramped and childish.

Well, from then on I was immediately embarrassed by everything I did. Whether it was looking at someone else or adjusting myself in my seat. I was not comfortable for the rest of the day.

I think I’m setting myself up for a major anxiety attack though. Everyone else today got schedules for the rest of their job orientation, but since my position is different I didn’t receive one and don’t know what the rest of the week is going to hold for me. And Thursday looks terrifying because it might be a day where I have to be at two separate locations, and I don’t have my own transportation, so I don’t know how I’ll make it from one place to the other in time…

I don’t want to give up, but then again I really do. I’m not taking any medication for this anxiety and I’m totally by myself. When it gets really bad I start to scratch my wrists or fidget, if I’m not already holding back tears or trying to hold off thoughts of how to punish myself for making more mistakes. That’s a problem I don’t know how to fix. I’ve never been good at asking the right questions or speaking up, but that’s what needs to happen right now and I just know I’m going to fail at it, along with everything else regarding this job.

It’s hard to breathe.

Just fine…

  

I arose from sleep

Just fine

I stood, and saw through

Healthy eyes

Ready, once again, to try

At living the

Rest of my life

 

A good idea from which to start

With gathered flame,

A steady heart

Express and act the soul

I claim

Through words, paint,

A brush, some clay

 

But today’s shades did not last

By night the sullen numb

Returned

Crazy, stupid

Angels laughed.

Visions,

And faith, burned.

 

I wrote this a few weeks ago, trying to make up different forms and shapes with the words. It’s a poem about waking up with inspiration, openness, willingness, and a decent amount of faith in one’s abilities and creativity, then having all of that die at the end of the day, when things don’t turn out right. When discouragement gets in the way and every idea starts to seem silly and a waste of time. I deal with this a lot. Starting things I at first think are great, then never finishing them because of a gray numb and empty feeling that takes over, and leaves me uninterested.

 

Next week I have one more appointment with my job coach to sign some new required forms, then I have to make an appointment to have an interview with the lady who’ll register me for the training. I don’t know why they want an interview, it has me a little nervous, but what’s the worst that could happen? They can reject me, and I can die saying I tried. I won’t beg for this. I took their little test, passed, signed their papers, and I’ll even make a pledge to fully complete the program if that’s what they want (I already know I will follow through if I’m accepted), but I am not going to get on my knees and beg them for this. Sure, it’s my last real opportunity to make a life for myself, but if it falls through I have another option, and I will certainly take myself up on it. I don’t like to take life as a game, but I know that’s exactly what it is. I can lose so many times, and remain tired and sick for so long before I refuse to take part anymore.

 

For a second there I thought it a good idea to start back up on Zoloft again. But that went out as soon as I remembered that I can’t be prescribed the medication without therapy along side. And I’m not making that mistake again. Therapy fixed nothing for my social anxiety. A doctor can suggest things to me, but I’m not good at applying it all. No one idea or approach is the single best thing anyway. It’s a condition I’ve just got to manage, by any means. I can do it. I haven’t killed myself yet, so something’s working out alright.

 

It’s about disappointment…

        Complete disappointment, from many different angles. From people using or manipulating you to the bad advice from others or yourself that you never want to hear but it is repeated over and over anyway. But that’s just my interpretation of it (for today..lol).

Let Down

Trust swindled me of a soul

I was above the trance of these other sheep

But I see what they’ve done

Every smile I perceived was a fallacy

To ever think I was enough….

 

I am swathed in botched self confidence

A boring balance of undesired range

It’s my own disillusionment forcing me to change

It’s the beady way they looked at me

With flickering disdain….

  

This is the life of the broke and used

I am beneath with the fragments of an unfulfilled wish

Fast pace confusion gave its old opinion

Shriveled experience poured out its dust of a vision

Its wisdom and wounds, without a reason  

 

I never mentioned before, but about two or three days ago I received my absentee ballot (early voting here in Ohio). I was so glad to finally get it over with and send my ballot back through mail, because here in my city the polling places are expected to be very packed and I was worried about waiting until Nov. 4th and having to see the line I’d have to wait in. It’s cool though. Now a person who actually needs that place in line will have it, and might be able to cast their vote before the polls close that day. Strangely, I’m in such a better mood today :)

I don’t want to run anymore.

Call me crazy but I actually called my mother today at work and explained, after another issue of college financial aid to dance around, that it seems I’d rather die than actually get a job. I said those actual words to her, it’s never been done before. She then says we’ll ‘work it out’ and talk about it all when she gets home. Great….I did make it clear though that this is how I feel. Seriously. I then said that maybe I should have stayed on medication, but that it just made me not care even more. And that the therapy had not been effective.

Now I can sink into that numbness I so often complain about. It is needed and wanted right now most of all, because I can’t run from what I’ve said and admitted and I don’t want to. Feeling anymore towards the situation right now will make me retreat and deny it’s all true. And I’ve done enough back stepping and avoiding. In reality, avoiding and denying and distracting have been more self-destructive than causing any real pain, but they are what I’ve used to simply surivive this, to survive the way my mind works.

Dried blood, my circumstances, weak, helplessness

           I have been so right all along. I am supposed to swallow my anxiety and fear and pretend it’s not what rips me apart inside for ever moment I still breathe. Because there is no cure for social anxiety. The rest of the world considers this disorder a joke I’m sure, but it’s not so light to deal with. It’s caused severe depression and a complete feeling of desperation, of being trapped. I should make it clear how it is in my head.

I can not and do not want to get a job because I WOULD RATHER DIE FIRST. Literally. The interviewing, the pathetic resume I haven’t bothered writing down, the lying I am no good at…where does it leave me? It leaves me starving in the end.

My circumstances are ones that have delayed and continue to stall any progress. I can’t drive, have no work experience and an unfavorable personality. I am that person with social anxiety who has one person in my everyday support circle, my mother, and unfotunately, she doesn’t understand how much it breaks me in dealing with this. I put off learning to drive because I knew my family couldn’t handle the financial burden at the time to send both me and my twin brother through student driving courses. So, I passed and let my brother go first, and I waited until I am now too old to take the same course. I stalled in looking for a first time job because I knew my options would be limited. I would have had to work either at a fast food place or be a cashier somewhere. I feared the situation then and I fear it now, more than ever, because my time is running out.

CB therapy was alright at first. It eased my depression along with the pills, but I let go of all that. I don’t want to talk anymore to people who cannot do anything to genuinely change the circumstances of my life. No one can do that, and they shouldn’t. I don’t want a life, so it’s not neccessary for anyone to try. Oh, and I’ll not forget to metion the near $200 bill the fucking insurance company is sticking me with. They’ve changed how they charge patients for mental health services, and it doesn’t favor the patient, of course.

I could change my degree to Graphic Design and go through another year of courses with a half heart and weak motivation, and it won’t change the circumstances. I’ll still be in this house, without a licence, without work experience. I am shutting down and it’s clear from the numbness. It is deadness now, complete lifelessness.

If I don’t kill myself, what will society do with me in such a state? There’s nothing in life I want that would make it worth the hell of being forced to ‘face my fear’ and anxiety of social situations, day after day after day. It isn’t right, but neither is lying to myself.

Poem titled “Leave Me”

 

Cheap in my silence

Unraveled and desire-less

My hopeless despondence

Existence of somnolence

 

Dreams of a sickened mind

Where all is blood and death

When pain keeps the soul alive

I yearn, the safe of darkness

 

A dearly met impulsive sting

For a moments honest peace

Leave me in this daze.

Leave me spilled beneath my blade.

 

 

The art page/slide is updated now: fifty five images total, not including the one above yet.   

 

I think it’s got to be more than just social anxiety now. I’ve gotten too comfortable with avoidance and I don’t think I can change how I feel about it. Avoiding social interaction just keeps the pain and distress low. I like being alone over being around others, but I know as well as anyone else that it can not be this way forever. Anyway, I’ve gone numb and it’s hard to write again. How many pathetic times will I say that….

 

Part One

   

        About a month ago I finished writing a weird group or collection of lines (it’s nameless, with three parts so far). You could call it poetry, or prose or whatever seems most fitting, but I wrote it with a focus on better imagery and a more striking use of it. It ties in how I feel about myself going through therapy and how my self image has been in dealing with social anxiety. Sometimes I don’t think people around-family specifically- understand how inadequate I feel about actually living this life. I don’t they have any real idea actually. So I’ll just say that this was a release. I didn’t hold back.

  

I dispute; they say my pain is not that bad

They laugh, as I tear myself right before their eyes

Crumbling the progress that’s been beaten into my head

The lies I am being conditioned to make part of my spirit

Wings trying to fix and lift, ignoring how much they don’t belong

 

The future sitting on the shelves, hidden away in boxes

Left un-thought about, unloved

Unpleasant, as the black ink forever fades  

I am the memory better off burned from the gray

Destroyed as young blooms swept up by gusts

 

The new bridge not trusting its own strength

Anticipatory ruin, rust, a certain bleeding

The dependable trip and stumble, what I am…..

A life through the dark, desiring to walk upon the blades I think are there

Waiting to slice through and be made unrecognizable

 

Shaking hand as it tries to write something important

Up the street, paranoid, answer of the phone

Racing heart, folded bones, when seeing the white coat

When hearing the clicks and rips of their tools and plastics

A thick scent of how much my ‘imagined’ fear hurts.  

 

 

 

 

I’ll post the other parts very soon.