Ache

I'm aching all over...in my heart, in my head, in my body....the aching is ongoing.

I feel like the lights have been turned out and I'm forced to crawl through a room of doors, looking for the right one out. I've opened door upon door only to find myself back in this dark room of doors. Now I'm sitting here in this room, wanting to give up and just sit in sorrow on the floor. I'm sitting in this room, I've stopped feeling my way for the exit...I've stopped.

What makes a person wake up feeling like this? What causes this anguish? Where's the relief? I've asked God over and over to shine some light in this dark room, but am I not looking? I don't understand.

My head is pounding....from stress, from anxiety, from holding back the tears. I have no desire to do anything. I'm scared.

Of what? There's nothing to fear but fear itself, and that is precisely what I fear. It's as though I'm experiencing EVERYTHING and it causes me to become very overwhelmed with life. Even the smallest task has become the most daunting; the list of responsibilities is endless and I have no desire to even start on it.

If I only could make a deal with God....

Are these tears of morning?...

...or mourning?

Awakening this morning to a phone call bidding my presence at Funky Monkey in Santa Rosa, where children run like wild animals and parents (already in a heightened state of anxiety) maintain their sanity. The automatic response continues to be from the voice of my agoraphobia telling me I won't be able to maintain my sanity; I will lose it. "What if?" this and "what if?" that. Using my workbook, I have decided to counteract these statements; these useless, terribly untrue statements.

When a situation begins to present itself, I immediately think of how my anxiety can fit into the picture. However, what I notice is I don't give chance to the positive aspect of the opportunity and rather look at it as another instance where I'll be anxious and I will become exhausted from keeping myself in check. And because it exhausts me so, I become unwilling to try and instead find ways to make the situation not happen, creating avoidance. At what point is it avoidance?

Funky Monkey isn't going to happen today because my friend no longer wishes to go. I feel relieved, and yet guilty for feeling relieved because now I'm not going to be putting myself in an uncomfortable situation. Am I avoiding it? Or am I scrutinizing everything? I think the latter.

I read and have been told once a while ago that knowing TOO much about the issues in your head can be MORE detrimental than good, because then you can no longer behave normally; you'll always be second-guessing every decision or action you make. So I try to look back on how I've behaved before this breakdown: if I didn't want to go to Santa Rosa, I didn't go: end of story. If plans with a friend didn't work out, I sometimes felt relief: it's perfectly normal. I also felt anxious about going places but still went and got through it and never scrutinized so much over the little details of everything. It's so unnecessary.

So I'm going to figure out SOMETHING for today, whether that's staying and cleaning the house or going out for a walk with a monster or two or visiting a friend. I don't HAVE to have a plan for the day to feel like it's not time or practice being wasted. There's SO much to look forward to, so I'll concentrate on that instead.