In Hiding

Something happens to me when my anxiety hits a certain level: I stop going out unless I have to. I don't leave for a walk or just to be outside of my apartment. I leave for work — when I have some — and for medical appointments. Even leaving to go get a haircut, pick up prescriptions, or get groceries require herculean effort. If I couldn't pace around in my apartment, dance, and do minor exercises, I'd get no exercise at all.

This began last year but I think it's worse this year. The last time it happened was when I was in my early 30s. I'd bought my house, which was my haven, and both work and my ex-boyfriend had become serious stressors in my life, to the extent that I took a couple of months off of work due to mental health issues (this was the boss from hell, an exceptional person at making my life miserable). Even when I was going to work, I was going out in other ways less and less until I'd cancelled on my girlfriends once too many times. They came to the house and used the house key that I had given each of them to come in, make sure I was okay, and forcibly socialize me.

There is currently no one to come do that to me here and now. I don't think I'm that bad, either: I would gladly leave for a job interview and, if necessary, commute to work. I'm trying to get one friend to get together. I do leave here for lunches out with friends (I forgot that in the first paragraph).

Why do I hide inside? Fear. Anxiety. If I stay in the apartment, it's less likely that something bad will happen, so my mind whispers to me. I know that's crap ... staying home would not have kept my mom from dying ... but my mind is persuasive and I want to believe that there is something I can do to stay safe.

Sitting on the Couch

I've got anxiety pretty bad these days. I feel anxious about looking for work, about signing up with a freelancers association that could lead me to more work, and about not finding work and going broke.

I feel anxious about leaving my apartment. It's hot outside and I can't be spending money on things I don't need, so I don't need to go out, except for therapy, grocery shopping (which I do on the same day), and getting the mail, which I often let pile up in the box.

My anxiety makes me want to just wrap my arms around myself, around and around until I'm unable to move and I am calm. So I sit on my couch, day after day, and I don't really do much. My comfort zone has become excruciatingly small.

I even try not to think: I go online and see what blogs have new postings, but even blogs with new content run out. So I have to think some. I get bored with blogs and with playing solitaire or sudoku on some electronic device.

And I think I've very nearly hit bottom. There's not a lot of room between me and the bottom of whatever it is, be it the barrel or the Abyss, so most of the space for movement is up. It would help if up were easier or I had help. But for some reason, my life has required that I do most things alone, with no help from others. I think this is quite mean of life.

Don't Mind My Reach

Reaching out for contact, for comfort and support, and for help: this is a concept and a behavior I know little about. Sure, I know on a theoretical basis, but not on a practical one. My family only reached out to other family, and then tried their best to not do that. Being a burden was considered a very bad thing.

Thus I have no way of judging when I am and when I am not being burdensome. When do I ask for comfort and when am I just whining? When do I need someone to hang out with and when am I just being self-pitying? What's the difference between asking for someone to listen ... and narcissism? Do these seem like excessive comparisons? Now you know why I don't have an effective yardstick for judging. 

Suddenly ... Community!

I unexpectedly find myself with friends and a supportive community of people I've never met, and never even talked with on the phone. We blog, we comment, we email, we tweet. I even watch TV with some of them!

In fact, I watched Castle in tandem tonight with two women I met on a blog. We each watched a recording (I was on hulu.com) and IMed as we watched. It was way fun! I even laughed out loud, several times, and I haven't done that in so long I can't remember.

I make friends slowly. I'm not doing anything where I'm meeting people, and I'm not in a space where I am comfortable going out and meeting strangers. Catch-22.

It will change. I'll be okay. It's been a difficult year. Hell, it's been a difficult couple of years, in different ways. It was great finding work, getting to know people. Then it all fell to hell. Intellectually, I know it's a lot to deal with. Intellectually, I know that I need to "move on" as they say (who the hell came up with that phase, and who the hell decides when?). Emotionally, it's another story entirely. I'm not in control of my heart. I'm still pretty lost.

But this community, floating out there in the digital aether, is somehow tethering me to earth. I'm beginning to feel less alone.

I didn't expect to feel like that again. I never, ever expected to feel like that due to people I've never seen.

Laundry in Las Cruces

I arrived in LC on Wednesday, around 3:00. I was tired and had been driving for over 250 miles. I wasn’t thrilled at being on a minor highway, especially when the AAA travel person had said the hotel was downtown. It isn’t. And there are train tracks on the other side of the minor highway.

But I fell in love with my room. I stayed at the Best Western Mission Inn, and it was done in Spanish Mission style, with heavy, carved wood furniture, plaster, and lots of tile. The entire wall behind the bed—king sized!—is built in, creating a tile-topped headboard and surround. The surround has electrical outlets built into the top; the lamps and phone are on the surround and there is plenty of room for laptop, books, water, small children and pets, etc. The ceiling has beams…and acoustical tile, unfortunately. The tile floor in the bath and dressing area is heated radiantly from below.

The hotel has a restaurant: the Blue Agave Café. It wasn’t busy most evenings, so I had lots of time to talk to the waiter. He’s in school, studying to be a special-ed teacher. Nice guy. He said he wished he could be someplace where it rained. The next night, I had thanksgiving dinner at the café. It was quite busy and the servers were jumping. It was raining lightly when I went in to dinner, then slightly harder, and my waiter from the night before teased me about bringing the rain; I proudly took credit for it. Then it started to pour outside and everyone—patron and server—stopped to look. I’m sure they don’t usually get rain that hard.

I did my laundry Friday, in a Laundromat. Most of the machines were running and there were people in and out of there—Hispanic people, Caucasian people, mixed ethnicity people. The attendant was a Hispanic woman, maybe a bit older than me. She was warm and friendly and talkative, and the two of us had a great conversation for over half an hour. She had a big Thanksgiving: her husband, her kids from both marriages, friends from the Laundromat who had no family to be with.

She loves Las Cruces. But some of her family have no jobs right now. So when they all get together for a birthday or something, she said the ones who are working pitch in to cover the ones who aren’t.

I haven’t done laundry in a Laundromat in so long I don’t remember how long it’s been. Mostly I’ve had in-unit or in-building laundry facilities, when I didn’t have my own washer & dryer. The machines here were clean and they work very well. The building was clean. It was a comfortable place. My comfort zone has expanded a couple of notches.

I also shopped for groceries, for books, for another cell phone (my friend Steve put me on his plan as an additional line in the hopes I will help him use up some of his enormous amount of rollover minutes and not go over what seemed like enough minutes on my other plan: if you want my new number, email me), and then got an oil change (over 3,000 miles since my last one, a week or so before I took off).

Las Cruces is very nice and I liked it. But it is too small to give me the kind of work I’d like and it is too sleepy for me. I need somewhere more energetic now, after 7 years in a very sleepy place.

What Do You Spread On Your Bread?

I was fairly young when I learned something shocking: not all households use mayonnaise. Some use Miracle Whip. And some households use a different kind of mayo than Best Foods, which was my family’s spread of choice.

As I am traveling, I am reminded of this. My stepsister’s fridge contains Miracle Whip and a dark mustard. Mom still uses Best Foods and Dijon mustard. I use Kraft mayo and whatever mustard currently interests me: Dijon, yellow, stone ground, etc. And my stepsister’s fridge has Swiss cheese, rather than the cheddar I keep.

People have different kinds of tea as well. Many people have no tea in their house at all…luckily for me I haven’t spent much time at those houses, for what would I drink? And among those who do keep tea, what kind(s) do they have in their pantry? One set of friends in the Bellevue WA area have a huge pantry and have many teas in that pantry and in a drawer—one of them drinks only herbal or decaf and the other drinks mostly black. Unfortunately for me, the black tea drinker likes mostly Earl Grey and strongly flavored black teas. Ugh. My stepsister keeps a small variety of herbal and simple black teas, quite drinkable but unfortunately for her not as much as I am used to drinking! I promise to not drink all of her tea. And I can easily go out to the box in my car that contains my tea and my tea pot and make a small pot of my customary tea, which would fill my tummy and provide comfort.

I think that having a bit of the familiar—a favorite tea, some cookies, or a pillow—when traveling can provide a stable ground; traveling makes me feel quite unstable, like I am standing on an ever-changing slope…or quicksand. I think that that instability is part of what provides the challenge and the stimulation of travel, the part that makes you grow.

This journey of mine is not only physical but mental, and part of the mental journey involves stretching my comfort zone to encompass much more than the confines of my own walls. Different spreads and alternative cheeses and plain versus fancy teas may not seem like much, but to someone whose world had constricted to the size of a 1300 square foot house, they represent a foreign country (only one much cheaper and easier to get to).

At least I don’t have to learn a new language to read the street signs.