12:56 p.m. - 2012-03-03
anxious
Today is one of those days ... that if someone pushed me in front of a subway train, I'd probably thank them.
I'm not fantasing about jumping in front of a train, mind you -- I'm not depressed enough to want to do that -- but I could stand near the edge of the platform, with my toes on the yellow line, and let fate or random aggression decide which way I go.
I am really tired of being depressed and anxious all the time. I have felt some form of rotten pretty much every day of my life for the past 30 years. I'm sick of it. And I've probably got at least 30 years to go. This sucks.
I have spent enough time with therapists over the years to have learned a few things, including how to talk myself out of most of my anxiety and depression. Most of the things I worry about and criticize myself about are banal and unimportant, completely unworthy of the mental distress they cause me. For example, when I hear a car door slam in front of my house I immediately freak out because I have a sink full of dirty dishes and if she knocks on my door and sees the dishes she'll probably give me a humilating lecture on how important it is to wash the dishes immediately after using them because dirty dishes attract ants and the ants will migrate to the other half of our duplex and my landlord will have to pay the Terminex people to spray the ants, all because I am a slob and leave dirty dishes sitting in my sink for a whole morning or afternoon.
Believe it or not, this scenario passes the reality test; is something that could quite possibly occur in real life because that woman is INSANE -- but my anticipated reaction to her invasion and lecture -- humilation and self-loathing -- does not pass the reality test. Dirty dishes in your sink and a bitchy landlord do not make you a worthless human being.
This analysis -- reality check -- helps to calm my anxious thoughts, but it doesn't keep me from jumping out of my skin when i hear a car door slam. And I can't shake that feeling that something very, very bad is going to happen -- I call it my "sense of impending doom."
And probably inevitably something really bad will happen somewhere, but not necessarily here, and not necessarily in the next 24 hours. So that one doesn't really pass the reality test either.
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