I remember going to a therapy appointment quite a few years ago, flinging myself into the chair and promptly launching into a ten-minute-long tirade about how fat this complete idiot was making me. Didn't she see how huge I was? And she still wanted me to gain weight?!?

After I came up for air, my therapist looked at me and said with a voice that can only be described as overly saccharine, "Now, Carrie, we know that bad body image really isn't about how we look. Why don't you tell me what's really going on."

The reframe sent me further into a rage. Don't patronize me, I said. I'm feeling fat because I am fat and that's it. There's nothing more to it. Period. End of story. So why don't we talk about what we're going to do about my need to lose weight now that you've porked me up.

And so on. The session would not be classified as "productive."

With time, maturity, and proper nutrition, I've come to realize that my therapist had a point. I remembered her point today, when my work schedule can only be described as a game of Whack-a-Mole on meth. I'd send one email, and other editor would ask for art. I'd send some potential images, do the changes on the previous email. While making those changes, editor #2 would write back and say those images don't work, do you have any more? So I'd search for some, and then editor #1 would write back and...well, you get the idea.

I was stressed and on edge, almost ridiculously so. Perhaps not surprisingly (to my ex-therapist, at least) the feelings of body dysmorphia, body hate, and generally feeling "fat" came back. It got me thinking to something my friend Charlotte said about her daughter. Maybe the "fat" feelings weren't really about fat at all. Maybe it was anxiety that she was trying to translate the best way she knew how. Given our culture's general angst around food and weight, maybe this is how we make sense of anxiety. It's got to be about food and weight, right? What other explanation can there be?

Obviously, this isn't the only explanation, but the more I think, the more I'm beginning to understand the validity of this. My stress today had zero to do with food or weight. Zilch. And yet I immediately started fretting about what I was eating and what I must weigh. Logically, I know my weight is probably the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that, and... I know that emails from editors don't magically make my thighs expand (seeing how many emails I get each day, that's probably a good thing). But that didn't stop my brain from diving into those old, familiar depths.

I don't think that this is the sole explanation for body dysmorphia in eating disorders--one of the emails today was from a piece about body dysmorphia that's will publish shortly--but I do think it explains why stress is such a trigger for so many of us. Our brains are just trying to make sense of something we can't explain, so we do the best we can with the vocabulary we have. My own vocabulary happens to be marinated in the larger culture of diet obsessions. Maybe Catherine of Siena would have worried about her abilities to be holy if she were in my shoes (and they had email and Whack-a-Mole in the Middle Ages). That might have been how she made sense of her compulsion to starve herself. I have the same compulsion, but a very different culture that provides a very different vocabulary.

It would have been nice--and much less patronizing--if instead of just saying "We know bad body image isn't about our bodies..." with an unavoidable patronizing undertone, my ex-therapist had said that sometimes our brains don't translate anxiety properly. That sometimes we get confused and attribute worries about something else to worries about food and weight.

I've never been a good sleeper.  Even when I was younger, it always took me well over an hour to fall asleep--pretty unusual for an 8-year-old.  But my brain just doesn't shut off.  Even if I'm not worrying per se, I can't stop thinking.

As I've gotten older, my circadian clock has shifted to be ever later.  I can fall asleep fairly easily as long as I don't head to bed until at least 2am.  A lot of times, later.  I've tried forcing myself to wake up early in the morning in the hopes that then I'll want to fall asleep earlier.

Nope.  Didn't work.

Just as I haven't yet mastered the art of intuitive eating, I apparently having mastered intuitive sleeping.  It seems obvious that you would fall asleep more easily if you're really tired.  You would think, right?  Not always, though. 

I don't think that being an extreme night owl is wrong or bad, but it's not always convenient when you're trying to keep regular work hours.  I had hoped by having a little less sleep for a few days that I would get tired earlier.  Except I didn't.  If I just stayed up until I really felt like going to sleep, I'd be up until the middle of the night.

Which has ultimately led me to the conclusion that I need more structure to my sleep schedule.  On the one hand, going to bed earlier means that I will probably be tossing and turning for many hours.  On the other hand, if I don't start going to bed earlier, then I'm never going to actually start getting to sleep earlier. I just get so insanely frustrated when I'm utterly exhausted, but my eyes won't stay shut.* Sleep meds just don't work for me, either.  If they do help me sleep, they turn me into a total zombie the entire next day, which sort of defeats the point of taking them.

Right now, I'm just hoping that more concerted efforts to sleep right will help.  Otherwise, I'm getting seriously frustrated.

*Sometimes, I have difficulty sleeping because I'm still hungry, but even when I get something extra, I still can't sleep.

I was in the bathroom today, and I got to thinking (thinking, for me, is generally a dangerous phenomenon and especially so when I have lots of time to myself, such as when using the loo).  Alcoholics can take Antabuse.  It doesn't take away the cravings or the ability to drink, it just makes drinking extremely unpleasant.  And I was thinking that it would be nice if I could have something like that for anorexia.  Something to make the illness immediately and acutely unpleasant.  Something to retrain my brain from thinking "But not eating will make me feel so much better..."

Of course, if an alcoholic really wanted to drink, they would just not take the Antabuse, but still.

I know that anorexia does make me feel worse in the long run.  But then I think that not eating will make me feel better right now, and it gets hard.  Because "long term" is very cognitive; "right now" is much more emotional.  It's much harder to use cognitive skills against a very visceral reaction.  It makes good evolutionary sense. When there's real danger, it's actually an asset to act without thinking.  The problem is that our brains generally suck at figuring out when it's real danger (as in OMG-I'm-going-to-be-eaten-by-a-tiger) and when it's not.  Again, thank natural selection.  It operates on whatever helps us survive and reproduce, not what makes our lives calm.

Which brings up the next question: maybe it's not my response (stress=ED thoughts), but my perception of danger.  The problem is that I find the world pretty terrifying.  And what do you do when you always feel on edge?  When you're never quite sure what will come back and bite you in the ass and so you treat everything like a rabid animal?

I think it's something I need to discuss with Dr. H tomorrow.  I know I need to desensitize myself to many of these things.  Exposure and response prevention is very effective with OCD, and I know personally that it's helped diminish my food fears.  But with the OCD and anorexia, I had something concrete to work on.  I was scared of germs.  Or food.  Or of hitting someone with my car.  Now, my problem isn't so much OCD but generalized anxiety, that constant "what if" chattering away in the back of my mind.

Anxiety can be overcome--or at least people can learn to live with it.  I'm still trying to figure out how.

On this past week's Sunday Smorgasbord, one of my readers asked me for hints on breaking free from that maelstrom of worries that so often overwhelms people with eating and/or anxiety disorders.  I'm not saying that I'm an expert on this, because I frequently find myself sucked in to my worries, which never results in anything productive.  Nonetheless, I'm getting better at surviving the worry storms, and here are some of the tricks that I use.

1. Breathe.  It's a classic.  Take a deep breath.  Or several.  Deep breathing is very calming in and of itself.  Besides just breathing, pay attention to your breath as it enters and leaves your body.  Feel your lungs expand.  Feel the tiny hairs on your upper lip ruffle as you exhale.  It's called mindfulness, and it helps bring me back to the present moment and the present problem.

2. Take a break.  It was one of my homework secrets in high school and college: I always started the frustrating work first.  Not just to get it out of the way, but also so that I could take a break and work on something else if and when I got too anxious and frustrated.  Often, walking away from my physics or linear algebra homework, doing something else, and coming back to it after I had calmed down and regrouped made things go so much smoother.  So if balancing your checkbook is causing you to freak out, put the calculator down, do something else, and come back to it.  You will think more clearly and find the task much easier to accomplish.

3. Prepare for the worst.  Yeah, I know, much of The Advice out there is to tell ourselves that our worries are exaggerated and look at them rationally.  Which is a good thing, but often I find it more helpful to just bite the bullet and prepare for the worst.  If the ultimate worry is that I'm going to go broke and end up on the streets, figure out a plan.  What savings do I have?  What resources can I call upon?  What are my other options job-wise?  I don't spend a lot of time on this, but just knowing that even if the worst does happen, I can handle it calms me right down.

4. Animal therapy.  My cat or another furry friend always makes me feel better immediately.  It's like I can exhale just a bit.  Besides, how can a soft, purring kitty not make someone feel better?

5. Distract yourself.  This is a little different from #2, although it can be used as part of the "do something else."  Sometimes what I need isn't another task because I'm too frantic to concentrate.  I need something more distracting and mindless.  For me, watching re-runs of TV shows (I love House) or movies is calming.  They're familiar, as I've probably seen them before, which is soothing in and of itself.  And they get my mind off of whatever I'm worrying about.

6. Talk about it.  This is not something I'm good at.  I hate talking about my worries because what's the point?  Often, no one can help me, and I feel like a burden--or at least a neurotic basketcase.  But even if someone can't do anything about what's got my panties in a knot, just saying it out loud helps.  And many times, my friends and family will have a different way of viewing what's going on that can help, too.

7. Better living through chemistry.  I have a prescription for lorazepam (Ativan) for when I'm freaking out, panicky, and nothing else has worked.  Or I'm so wound up that using a coping skill is just ludicrous.  I resisted for a long time because I was afraid that benzodiazepenes were addictive, and I didn't want to just pop a pill.  But even just knowing that I have the pills in reserve helps me get through bad situations because I know I have something to make it better.

At least, this is what I'm telling myself right now.

It seems to be the cure, because I'm always anxious about something. So if I do XYZ, then I won't have to worry about this one thing.

The problem is that the thing my brain is currently freaking out about (did I exercise enough? Did I ask the right question during the interview? Did the person I was interviewing think I'm a dumbass?) really isn't relevant to what I'm actually anxious about, which is the boatload of uncertainty in my life right now. Being compulsive fixes these little worries (do more exercise, double-check the interviews, nitpick over their transcriptions, analyze the questions you asked) but it really does nothing to address that big, looming question.

But at least that one worry is fixed, right? At least then that's one thing I don't have to worry about.

Except that outside of my OCD-wired brain, I'm not actually worried about these things. They're a smokescreen. Or a record that gets stuck. You know, the old black vinyl circles that our parents (and occasionally some of us aged bloggers) used to listen to. If the record got a scratch, the needle couldn't translate the sound right because it got stuck on the scratch. It couldn't play any further. OCD is like that stuck needle, playing the same annoying two-second stretch of song over and over and over again. It can't get off of it unless you get up and physically move the arm. The entirety of the album is like my overarching worry. Focusing on every little scratch doesn't help you listen to the album.

(Am I totally dating myself here? I owned several records when I was younger, one of which was a Sesame Street album, and also a Debbie Gibson record. There were others that I'm blanking on. Good times.)

So metaphors and reminiscences of the 80s aside, it's easy to over inflate the importance of these nagging worries. Sometimes yes, they do need to be addressed, but sometimes it's just your brain getting stuck. It's easier to focus on silly things you can do something about that a ginormous, looming fear that you can't quite articulate.

Of course, when these nebulous worries plague me, my brain gets stuck more easily. It's almost primed to get stuck on every stupid little thing that comes my way. I don't deliberately try to focus on the minutiae, but that's just where my brain goes. Then I forget all about the big picture because I'm caught up in ridiculous details like "is the fact that I exercised for 27 minutes instead of 30 going to make me gain 10 pounds?"

One not-so-irrelevant detail is that it's bedtime, and sleep deprivation doesn't help one bit.

Today is my last day at the bakery, and I'm mostly excited to be able to focus full-time on my writing, I will miss many of my co-workers. Yesterday, I was discussing with another baker (let's call him "D") the essentials of writing the next Great American Zombie Apocalypse Novel. The book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a bestseller (seriously. Do you think I could make this stuff up?), and so we wanted to rewrite other books with a zombie twist. Such as "To Kill a Zombie Mockingbird" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Zombie." I will miss conversations like this.

I will also miss the fact that my boss was trying to bribe me to stay by buying me iced coffees. It didn't work, but it was a nice perk! My boss is a complicated person, and sometimes I want to shake her, but we've also had our fair share of laughs*. We were talking last night as we cleaned the kitchen about how physically demanding the job was. I said that it was rather hilarious that all the customers were always wondering how I could work in the bakery and "stay so skinny!" when in reality my metabolic needs almost required large amounts of high-calorie goodies. My boss told me that she jokes with other people that she "eats like a 300 lb man" because she's so active.

If only she would have stopped there. Because the next thing out of her mouth was:

"Watch, now that you're no longer going to be with us, you're totally going to get fat."

I used my newly acquired interpersonal effectiveness skill of grunting, but inside, I panicked.

I know my boss knows nothing about my eating disorder history. I also know she was joking--she's just that kind of person. We tease each other and so on, and I'm not doubting for a second that she really didn't mean it (unlike my co-worker who jokingly--I think--called me "fatass." Am I sensing a theme here?). But I still worry about how/if quitting my bakery job will lead to weight gain.

It's an irrational fear, and I know it. The doubt, however, still nags at me. I am barely tolerating the weight I am at now, and I fear any sort of gain would throw me over the edge. I also don't want to go clothes shopping again. Like, ever again. Yet I know I can't let such a fear dictate my life and prevent me from chasing my dreams.

I know that being calm and rational is the way to get through this. So I've reminded myself of the following:

• TNT monitors my weight and we can step in if there is an upward trend.
• I can call my old dietitian and ask for support.
• I didn't lose weight when I started and so I probably won't gain when I leave.
• My weight stayed the same when I was out of town and not working for 3 weeks.
• If my metabolism can adjust to the upward shift in activity, it can adjust to the downward shift.

At the bakery yesterday, I began worrying about money. For someone who is almost pathologically cheap (except inside book, yarn, and bead stores), this is a fairly common worry. My income is pretty minimal, and I began to have serious doubts about my ability to move out on my own and support myself. Although these doubts are somewhat rational, where my brain went with them was decidedly not.

Each worry spawned another worry, each more outrageous and freaky than the last. It was as if my initial worry set off a series of dominoes, each worry knocking into yet another worry and soon any bit of rational sense and positivity had been knocked over.

The worries about money
Begat worries about my ability to live on my own
Begat worries about where to find freelance writing jobs
Begat worries about my ability to make it as a science writer
Begat worries about my skills as a writer
Begat worries about whether I was in the right career
Begat worries about whether I would ever find a suitable career
Begat worries about my abilities, period
Begat worries about being dependent on my parents for the rest of my life
Begat worries about what was going to happen as my parents aged
Begat worries about...

And so the dominoes fell.

This didn't even count all of the "what if?" statements that accompanied these worries, like "What if I'm being too selective about the jobs I'm looking for?" or "What if I'm just not cut out for adult life?" All too quickly, I was distressed, freaked out, agitated, and pissed off. This is not a good combination.

The important thing about realizing the domino effect of my worries is that removing one domino would have stopped the cascade. Is it rational to be concerned about finances in my position? Well, at least somewhat. That being said, I didn't have to let these worries spiral so out of control that I had visions of myself at age 60, my bloated corpse being plucked out of my parents' house with a cherry picker, along with a horde of cats. The thing is, I suck at pulling myself out of these worry spirals. Usually I just get sucked in and end up drowning in anxiety. I need to remember what worries are rational and what aren't, what worries I can address and what I must leave up to the universe.

I never really understood that I could stop these worries. I thought they existed as an independent entity, one that I had no control over. Most ironic thing: I felt I had no control over my worries that were about things I felt I should have control over but didn't. Life, you're too much for me, sometimes.

It's much easier for me to think of these worry spirals as a series of dominoes because then I can remove one, and the worry stops. I don't have to get rid of all of the dominoes to stop the cascade. I suppose my next task will be learning not to have so many dominoes that they can start a cascade.

Since I posted on Traitor Joe's late on Wednesday, I've had almost 50 hits for people searching for the "Complete Body Cleanse."

I don't know that my blog was the first site that popped up in their search, nor do I believe it looked the most obviously informative. So I'm guessing I'm just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

It's kind of frightening.

All I can hope is that this blog makes them think twice about what they're doing.

My grading is done.

Finally.

Of course, it will be back again on Wednesday, but still. I'm trying to enjoy the reprieve.

My New York trip was good. The bus on the way back had no heat- it was about 35 degrees inside. I lost all the feeling in my toes and nose. But I enjoyed seeing the offices of Discover Magazine and might apply for an internship there.

I really don't like that so many of the internships for writing are in New York. The city is an absolute sensory overload, not to mention ridiculously expensive. It's a matter of deciding whether or not I'm willing to put up with the city for a while in order to get a decent job and then move OUT of the city.

The thing that I like about living in an urban area is that I can walk almost everywhere. It's a hassle sometimes to get in the car and go somewhere. Even if it takes 5 minutes longer, I enjoy just using my two little feet to get wherever I need to be.

I hate all of this uncertainty. I want A Plan. I want to know what I will be doing next year. That would be really nice. But I don't have that. I'm looking at needing a series of short internships to do what I want to do, which means more moving, more uprooting of myself, more of pretty much everything that I don't like.

Yet I want a career as a writer. I don't know that I can imagine doing a whole lot different. So how much am I willing to put up with?

I wish I knew the answer to that. And I wish I could find out the answer to that as I went along. Every other time I've had to deal with a question like that, the anxiety has overwhelmed me and I've wound up back in treatment. I don't want that. I am so incredibly sick of treatment. I know I still need therapy, though there are times when I still am not thrilled with having to go. But I don't want more hospitals and treatment centers and 6 am blood pressure checks.

This fear is fueling the anxiety, which makes everything even more futile. If freaking out about having to go back to treatment is adding to the anxiety, and an increase in anxiety leads to an increase in relapse, then I'm really not doing myself a whole lot of good.

Though, truth be told, I'm also worried that if I get in a job that requires long hours, I won't be able to work out enough, or be forced to eat more take out and then gain weight. I don't know which freaks me out more, though I'm going to have to go with the latter. If push came to shove. I hope it doesn't, but still...

It's been a long day, and I'm completely exhausted. Tomorrow I don't need to use my alarm clock- an event worthy of the recapitulation of Handel's Messiah. Even if I don't sleep more than usual (and with the meds I'm on, it's likely that I won't), I just hate having some stupid machine harp at me, "Get up! Get up! Getupgetupgetupgetupgetup!"

I know I worry about the future too much. It's non-stop in my mind. What will happen when the bills come due? When I graduate? If I gain a pound? The future, that whole grand concept of things that haven't yet happened, scares the crap out of me.

And considering the events of the last couple years, I don't think my pessimism is entirely misplaced. Yeah, I know- some good things have happened, but by and large, things have turned out crappy. Mostly because of the eating disorder, but sometimes not. Regardless of why, all of my misgivings of what might happen have been strongly reinforced.

Now I'm trying (desperately) to find something to look forward to in the days to come. Graduation? Well, having money enter my bank account for once will be nice. Assuming I can find a job. A job that doesn't want to make my give myself a plastic spork lobotomy.

Scratch that.

So now I'm trying to think of something fun and random. Like travel. I have 6 weeks in December and January when I have nothing better to do. I intend to go traveling during that time. Lord only knows what where when or how, but that's what I am determined to do.

'Course, I'll probably book a trip and then a freelance job offer will come along.

I think I'm screwed on this one.

Right now, I need to tend to more pressing items. Like the article that's due tomorrow that I can't seem to get to sound right. I'd rather not get my head handed to me by my professor again, thank you. Or the fact that I should probably think about doing laundry. Or, for that matter, getting to bed and getting a decent night's sleep.

So I can wake up to another fun day of worrying tomorrow!

I seem to have been struck by Murphy's Law disease. Where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.

Lovely.

The exam was a disaster. We had 11 questions and needed to answer 10 of them. I could probably answer about 2 questions off the top of my head. There were another 3 or 4 that I kind of thought my way through to something resembling an answer.

The rest? Ha!

On my way to the exam, the elevators had broken, so I was waiting around for about 15 minutes for a freaking elevator. Then the gas tank on the shuttle that was supposed to take me to campus sprung a leak, so I had to wait another 10 minutes until a spare bus came by. At least I left early.

The rest of the day didn't go a whole lot better.

I'm just really frustrated and fed up at the moment. I have to do a lot of grading by tomorrow, too, and the essays are not works of art. I thought I was specific about what I wanted, but I guess not. So now I'm trying to do damage control.

All of the running from task to task is just wearing me out.

I'm rambling, so I'm going to come back later.

I have this nagging sense of dread. Doom shall follow. I know it. I can feel it in my bones, deep down inside, my heart tapping nervously in my chest.

Things are, of course, going well.

I am certain this can't and won't last.

I know- things are going to suck at some point in the future. That is the nature of life.

Yet. And yet.

This is an entirely new phenomenon in my life. Events just don't go smoothly. I've had a breakdown upon starting school since I was 11 and starting middle school. Every damn time. So here I am, in my nice little apartment, looking around at the pigeons divebombing the building and waiting like Chicken Little for the sky to start falling.

I feel like I'm missing something. Something big. Really big.

Could I be relapsing and not know it?

If things start going too well, am I going to get too relaxed and get fat?

Erm. Nice to know that little fear of mine. I don't want to get un-paranoid about food and weight because then I will gain like no tomorrow and wham! wind up fat.

I know this isn't realistic. I know that I wouldn't care if it happened to one of my friends. They'd still be my friend. Then again, I still don't quite know that I'm my own friend, so would it really matter?

So here I sit. Waiting.

I don't get this. I can't enjoy the good times because I'm too busy looking over my shoulder for one of the bad times to come flying at me again. This won't last. Breakdowns in my program are somewhat legendary. Granted, my breakdowns are somewhat more intense than the average person's. I want to tell myself: enjoy this while it lasts. Because it won't.

I think I'm missing something. That I should be worried and terrified about something and I'm not and that means something hugely bad is going to happen.

I'm walking down this dark alley, and it opens into a dimly lit street corner. I can hear the dripdripdrip of the rainwater splashing off the gutter. The screech of far-away tires followed by a wailing siren. My footsteps echo, the loudest thing in earshot. I whip my head around back and forth, eyes darting over each shoulder. The bad guy is there. Somewhere. I grip my car keys tighter and my heart begins to race.

Is the boogieman there? I don't know. It certainly seems that way. Every horror film has a scene like this, where the protagonist should be afraid (very afraid) only they can't see the danger lurking. And just when you think they're safe, the bad guy leaps out and strangles them.

That feeling. The watching and waiting knowing the main character is in danger but you don't know when and where it will strike.

That's how I'm feeling.

Wariness is good. I know Ed rarely gives a whole lot of warning before he begins to worm his way back into my life. I do need to watch out. He's gotten me that way before. I'm not stupid enough to think he's gone entirely. But the constant watching and waiting is getting to me.

And pissing me off.

This anxiety over things, even things that don't exist, has been my downfall in the past. Rationally, I should save my worry for something real. Oprah would say that she's done the excessive worry thing and then she learned that life is short, etc. She has all the answers. I don't get answers like that. My income is also several orders of magnitude less than hers, so there's that.

I'm worried that I'm worried too much about nothing, and simultaneously worried that I'm not worried enough. That I'm missing something.

I wish my mind would just pick. Either I should be worried or I shouldn't. If nothing is going wrong, then why freak out?

Because this is when Ed usually strikes. Only now I'm afraid I will have worn myself out so much that if he does, I might not have the strength and mental fortitude to keep him at bay.

Sometimes I hate my brain.

I'm feeling this knot of fear in my stomach. Mostly over school in the fall. There are all these questions like:

• How will I adjust to being in school?
• How will I juggle everything?
• What if I screw things up for the gazillionth time?
• What if everyone hates my writing?
• What if my students hate my teaching?
• How will I manage recovery?
• What if I relapse?
• What if I gain weight?

That last one is a doozy. Seriously. The intellectual Carrie knows that it should be the least of my worries. But the emotional Carrie knows that she will freak the f*ck out if her clothes stop fitting.

The obvious solution is: then get new clothes, ya ding dong! Problem solved.

Only not really. Then there's the do-I-keep-all-the-new-clothes-I-just-bought problem. The how-soon-can-I-lose-this-weight problem. The what-if-it-doesn't-stop problem. And so on.

I'm walking into a veritable mine field. I know I need to learn how to keep my perfectionism in check. That all A's, the perfect meal plan, the perfect exercise plan, the perfect lesson plans, the perfectly clean apartment are NOT going to happen. Not separately, and certainly not all together. I get this.

But I still want it.

I want to feel okay, both with myself and with the world. I feel so bruised from the last year and a half. I have learned a lot, come quite a ways in recovery. I eat now. With marginal freedom. I am no longer addicted to numerous varieties of pills related to eating disorders. I'm not sobbing and suicidal the majority of my days. So however crappy these months have been, at least they haven't been totally pointless.

Still, the fear remains.

There are the questions of: what will this next year bring? Will I make it through the next year? Intact?

I wish I had the spirit of "I'll handle it! Whatever comes my way, I'll handle it!" But that's probably not going to happen. I'm not like that. I can usually make things happen. That's usually not a problem. At least with the little things.

On the other hand, I have to manage all of these things at once. Wake up, go to class, teach, appointments, do work, eat, sleep again, repeat the next day. And it is freaking me out. All of it. The vast magnitude of the task in front of me.

The helpful therapist would say to take it one thing at a time. How can you take things one at a time when there are ten of them flying at you at once? Do you get some sort of task fly swatter? Swing it around with a sort of psychotic glee screaming, "Die, dammit!"

That sounds absurdly appealing. Paper to write? Swat it. Phone calls to make? Swat the phone. (Or, if you are me, chuck the phone against the cement floor and watch it explode into little pieces. Though I have not, to date, performed this experiment.)

I'm rambling right now. Quite pathetically. I just don't know how I'm going to manage everything. I know that I'm going to have to lower my standards, which frankly pisses me off. It's like juggling, only I can't, um, juggle.

Minor detail there.

Maybe one day I'll look around and say, "That's enough. I'm satisfied." I just wish that day would come. I want to be satisfied with my efforts. Sometimes I am. Mostly not. I feel the deck is stacked against me because some days, when the depression and anxiety get real bad, it's struggle to make it out of bed, or to be social. And I can't help but get jealous that other people don't have those problems. I don't know- maybe they do. Writers in general are not known to be an emotionally stable lot.

So for right now, I'm here, I'm writing, I'm managing things. Which really isn't all that bad.