another day older, and deeper in debt.
Monday, June 11th, 2007 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikaSo two and a half weeks ago, on a Wednesday when I was at work, I came back five minutes late from lunch and thought fuck it.
I was going to get in trouble for it, you see, and the trouble I was going to get in meant that if I was late one more time, or if I took any time off that wasn't vacation (i.e. if I got sick at work)—I would be on a written warning.
I looked at my computer and at my desk and at the walls of my cubicle—none of it really mine—and thought I hate it here. I hate the way this place is killing me.
So I walked out.
And I haven't gone back.
I didn't quit; I'm going on disability. A job, any job maybe, but that job particularly was just too stressful. Someone turned the volume on my anxiety up to eleven.
Now that I'm home, I have trouble accomplishing the simplest of tasks. I had trouble doing it at work, too, but it's even more noticeable when you have a fucking panic attack over the idea of doing dishes.*
My therapist says, start a routine, don't beat yourself up, blah blah blah. My psychiatrist says, we may have reached the limits of what my prescription pad can do for you. They say, you'll have to try harder, Erika, you have to get better, Erika.
Tell me how, goddamnit, don't give me endless platitudes, phony phrases linking up into complete and utter clarity, but only until I leave your office.
I don't talk to Chance for a day and a half on Friday because he doesn't realize I love Vanilla Coke. I see it on the shelves and I ran over and hugged it and he made fun of me, and I turned it around and ignored him completely.
I drove my mother's car to the bar where an acquintance works, and had a drink and thought and tried to calm down.
It didn't work, but slowly, over the course of the next 24 hours, I came to my senses. Particularly when, on Saturday night, he refused to sleep in the same bed—not out of meanness, just a general sense that I would prefer to be alone.
I wouldn't. So we made up.
And I do this over and over again. I walked a balance beam in gymnastics class when I was 7. I wish I'd continued, wish I'd practiced further because now I'm somersaulting, cartwheeling, dancing on a balance beam while juggling balls in the air and I mess up so fucking frequently.
Everyone else seems to do it at ease, like they continued until it was second nature, they took the classes I missed (how to deal with your emotions 101, How not to be a Psycho: 252, Advanced Interpersonal Dynamics: Keeping Friendships: 495). They missed the classes I took: all the way from Basic Distorted Thinking: Yes, Virginia, There Is No God: 101 to How to lose everything without really trying: 346, finally ending with Suicidal Ideation: How You and Your Thoughts Can Destroy What's Left of Your Life! (advanced, postgrad).
Take me back to the shop, get me a different brand of thought.
I try anyway. Maybe I'll even get somewhere.
(The most important thing is hope, right? That's what they all tell me. Personally I'd settle for motivation and a million dollars, but that's me.)
I was going to get in trouble for it, you see, and the trouble I was going to get in meant that if I was late one more time, or if I took any time off that wasn't vacation (i.e. if I got sick at work)—I would be on a written warning.
I looked at my computer and at my desk and at the walls of my cubicle—none of it really mine—and thought I hate it here. I hate the way this place is killing me.
So I walked out.
And I haven't gone back.
I didn't quit; I'm going on disability. A job, any job maybe, but that job particularly was just too stressful. Someone turned the volume on my anxiety up to eleven.
Now that I'm home, I have trouble accomplishing the simplest of tasks. I had trouble doing it at work, too, but it's even more noticeable when you have a fucking panic attack over the idea of doing dishes.*
My therapist says, start a routine, don't beat yourself up, blah blah blah. My psychiatrist says, we may have reached the limits of what my prescription pad can do for you. They say, you'll have to try harder, Erika, you have to get better, Erika.
Tell me how, goddamnit, don't give me endless platitudes, phony phrases linking up into complete and utter clarity, but only until I leave your office.
I don't talk to Chance for a day and a half on Friday because he doesn't realize I love Vanilla Coke. I see it on the shelves and I ran over and hugged it and he made fun of me, and I turned it around and ignored him completely.
I drove my mother's car to the bar where an acquintance works, and had a drink and thought and tried to calm down.
It didn't work, but slowly, over the course of the next 24 hours, I came to my senses. Particularly when, on Saturday night, he refused to sleep in the same bed—not out of meanness, just a general sense that I would prefer to be alone.
I wouldn't. So we made up.
And I do this over and over again. I walked a balance beam in gymnastics class when I was 7. I wish I'd continued, wish I'd practiced further because now I'm somersaulting, cartwheeling, dancing on a balance beam while juggling balls in the air and I mess up so fucking frequently.
Everyone else seems to do it at ease, like they continued until it was second nature, they took the classes I missed (how to deal with your emotions 101, How not to be a Psycho: 252, Advanced Interpersonal Dynamics: Keeping Friendships: 495). They missed the classes I took: all the way from Basic Distorted Thinking: Yes, Virginia, There Is No God: 101 to How to lose everything without really trying: 346, finally ending with Suicidal Ideation: How You and Your Thoughts Can Destroy What's Left of Your Life! (advanced, postgrad).
Take me back to the shop, get me a different brand of thought.
I try anyway. Maybe I'll even get somewhere.
(The most important thing is hope, right? That's what they all tell me. Personally I'd settle for motivation and a million dollars, but that's me.)
*(There weren't even that many dishes!
I don't think it matters, really, to my anxiety
but it was only half a sinkful.)
not to mention when my psychiatrist said
what he said, I wanted to throw something at him
HERE. you take my anxiety, then, you take my chronic depression
give me fucking electroshock therapy, SOMETHING
but don't tell me it's done,
don't tell me medication can't help me anymore
because half the time NOTHING ELSE CAN.
