Honest to blog, I'm exhausted.

I haven't been sleeping well, since Anxiety, Vague Sense of Unease, and their friend, Depression, have been keeping me up all night, and half-awake during the mornings. Let's pay some attention to them separately, shall we? so that they can perhaps be content and bugger off. Hurrah.

I was anxious enough for a few days last week to start taking my Ativan regularly. I've been craving nicotene, so I figured that Ativan would be a reasonable supplement - without all of the awful extras.
In small doses, Ativan can stop a panic attack from starting, or make my body immediately slow down until my mind follows suit. It'll keep my heart from racing, my palms from sweating, my arms and legs from shaking, and my teeth from grinding. It's what makes my brain say, Oh, body, if you're not so worried that our death is imminent, then maybe I shouldn't be so insistent that Cara run away from this situation.
In larger doses, Ativan is used to alleviate insomnia, to calm people before surgery, and, in even larger doses, to stop seizures. It's handy, but also highly addictive because of its ability to tell the brain to not be afraid, even in situations where it is reasonable to be afraid - such as when you're committing arson.
I usually take Ativan once a week, but I've also gone weeks without its seductive calming effects. I had to take it two or three times a day this past week, which is within my prescribed dosage, but it's often enough that I start to worry that I'm taking the anti-anxiety med too often.

So, my increased use of Ativan was a red flag that something was bothering me, but, funnily enough, that doesn't help me to narrow down the possible triggers. It's not like I take it everytime I see a spider, so I should know that I have arachnophobia. It's more like I'm about to walk into a jungle and there will be so many things to be afraid of that I panic and do something stupid, like running frantically and falling into a big pit of quicksand. (That's depression, which I'll get to in another post.)

It took a few days, but I determined that I was anxious about:
A: turning twenty-five, which I will do on Saturday
B: credit card debt, and general lack of funds
C: my partner's hesitation to move in with me this very minute
D: being a generally awful person

That's all, eh? Easy. Sigh.

How am I trying to rewire my brain so that it will be able to be productive - bake bread and
edit a scholarly journal - rather than obsess over that list? With lots of hot chocolate, puppy snuggles, easy reading for school (Ohai, Jane Austen!), and trying to look at these problems in other ways. Let's see what I can move around.

A: Can't keep from turning twenty-five. The age thing is inevitable. However, I need to stop thinking about what I haven't achieved and instead look at what I have accomplished. I also need to stop comparing myself to others. It could also help to stop thinking of twenty-five as some enormous benchmark. It could be a pivotal and positive moment in my life, but it certainly won't get that way if I'm too busy crying to bother eating.

B: I paid off my credit card, completely, thanks to my student loan, and am going to leave the credit card at home from now on. If there's an emergency - such as a vet bill - that I need it for, I'll go home and grab it. Sure, now I'm broke (I have money for rent from now until April, but that's about it), but I don't have that debt staring at me. I have options that don't have such awful interest rates as the credit card does. I could get a line of credit with a lower interest rate, or find a job for the weekends. I'm probably too busy to take on a part-time job right now, but it is an option to consider.

C: I talked to my partner. His hesitation was completely reasonable, and I totally respect his decision. He doesn't have a lease, but he still has to give his landlord two months' notice, so he couldn't move in until April anyway. There's little sense in moving in April when I'm doing my final papers and exams, so May would be the earliest. Also, he won't know until March or so if he'll be staying in Ontario for school next year, or if he'll be heading out to BC for school for September, or earlier to find an apartment. So, realistically, no informed decision can be made until March, and then it'll be for a May moving date. So what's ado right now? I have at least two months to wait, and perhaps another two after that to plan things, so that's not what I need to be using my brain power on right now. He loves me. He wants to make a home with me. He is hoping we'll be able to move to BC for the autumn, as he misses his family (he's been away from them for half a decade). And I want those things too. So, Cara, chill.

D: This is just ridiculous. How does one quantitatively or qualitatively determine what makes someone an awful human being? And if one could do that, I certainly wouldn't be able to assess myself - the results would be skewed due to bias and a severe conflict of interest. Sure, I feel like a terrible person, but I already know that my brain is unreliable in the feeling-processing area. I can feel ashamed without there being anything innately shameful in my actions. I can feel guilty without having done anything wrong. I can feel angry about things that I have no ability to control. So, I might feel awful, but that doesn't mean that I'm an awful person, or even that anything particularly awful has happened. More ridiculousness and inaccuracies. Awesome. Something else to stop worrying about.

If I can circulate through these thoughts rather than the ones in my initial list, then I should stand a chance of getting out of bed, eating, showering, and maybe even doing some schoolwork. If I slip back into my old list, then it doesn't mean that I've failed, I am a failure, or that I should fail to try anything. It just means I need to read over my new list, snuggle the puppy, pet the cat with my socked foot, and have some juice and peanut butter to help my brain and body work. I should do that, and then go back to whatever I was doing. And if that doesn't work, then I should distract myself by knitting, baking, or stamping my books with the awesome personalized Ex Libris stamp that my partner got me for Christmas. Yes. That's the game plan.