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Worry (and how to fail at dealing with it).

I skipped work yesterday. There, I said it.

I'm not sure why. I guess I didn't want to leave the house somehow. Or maybe I was sick of responsibilities. I'm sure some filaments of anxiety were woven into it.

It was like a spinny angry mess in my head, but maybe less severe than that sounds. Much less severe, to be sure, than times past. Certain questions and hounding thoughts pressed on through the day. 'What am I doing with my life?' 'What happened to the things I love?' 'I don't want to do this anymore.' 'I'm never gonna move out of this place.' 'What do I really want?'

Maybe, in staying home, I was hiding from these things. At home, in my room, in my bed, I have things--tried and true, however abused--to distract myself from my somewhat OCD like worrying. I have, at the least, a false sense of control.

In those times past when my worrying and anxiety got really bad, I would hole up here, withdrawn from everything that could foster guilt (however deserved or foolish that guilt may have been). I would shrink the universe down to this 8' x 12' space and cower from the harsh realities outside in the comfort of this imaginary bubble inside. This little space was mine, it felt, and safe; it was like the Zero Room in the Doctor's TARDIS--impenetrably safe from outside forces.

These comforts were only ever ephemeral and wavering at best; known deep down for what they were--artificial, fake, and escapist. But when things got bad inside my head--when papers were long overdue, when feelings turned fragile, when I felt empty and ashamed--I would sometimes camp out like this for weeks.


I haven't done anything that extreme in a long time; I'd like to think I've gotten better at handling worry and the things that cause it. Evidently, not altogether. I have learned more, it seems, in how to prevent it, but still falter at stopping that autopilot once it's clicked in.

More to the point, I'm still not sure what set this little hidey-hole-ness. I can't say I didn't see it coming at all; the last few weeks I've had a hard time getting to work on time when back about a month ago I was fairly consistently like an hour early every day. It's easy, though, for the mind to find a way to excuse that kind of thing. 'Not enough sleep = hard to get up in morning = late-ish to work' and the like.

Conveniently I'm seeing my therapist today. What a way to end a post.



aside: In trying to find something to link to in this post to make a certain point (I never found what I was looking for) I stumbled upon this comicthing on Hyperbole & a Half. It made me smile, even if it's not exactly how my depressy-ness works. Serendipity is cute.
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