I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack. I have exactly 11 hours and 23 minutes until I need to be at my job. It shouldn’t be this hard for a regular person. It should be fine. But I am broken. I am not well. I’m thinking about trying therapy again. I’ve been in and out of therapy god knows how many times. It doesn’t work. Because I don’t put the work in. I think though if I offer to pay this time, maybe my parents will be more receptive. I don’t want to ask my parents. I don’t want to break down in front of them again. I do this every couple of months or so. I don’t want to break down again. But I don’t know what to do. I still don’t have my medicine. I should call to get my prescription, but I feel the need to spend every second of my lunch break trying to relax and calm myself down before it’s back to work. I’m even thinking about maybe checking into behavioral center. I know for a fact though the only reason why I’m considering this is because in the back of my mind this is just another way of running away. When I’m in the center, I’m not at work and I don’t have to deal with this. I tried this shit once in my Senior Year to get out of presenting for this big project, but of course my psychiatrist saw right through that shit. At the time I definitely bought my own bullshit, but now I have to grow up and realize what I’m doing. I have to stare it down, no matter how scary it is. This past Tuesday and Wednesday I actually felt not worthless and felt like I was contributing something, even if it was small. Today felt awful though. I just felt like I was in the way and not doing anything meaningful. If anything I felt like I was saying and making all the wrong decisions. I can feel my manager slowly realizing how worthless I am. I asked if there was anything else I needed to do before leaving today and she just smiled and said no there was nothing. I can feel the fakeness of it all. The feeling of “just go already” coming off her. It’s no good. I’m no good. I was pacing in my room a little while ago looking at the clock. I go to bed in an hour. I haven’t been sleeping well. I wake up and toss and turn and then go back to bed. I wake up 30 minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off and just lay there waiting to drag myself to work and have more anxiety attacks there. I’m drowning and I don’t know what to do. For years I’ve begged and pleaded with myself to try and be better, to try and fix myself, but I can’t. I’m broken and I can’t be fixed and I just need to be thrown away. I’m starting to find that writing down my thoughts doesn’t help. It just helps catalogue all my horrible nightmares so I can reference back to them and slightly feel the hurt, pained feelings. I always wonder if the people who do really go through with the act and kill themselves find themselves happy where they are. If there is an afterlife and they are satisfied with their decision or if there is just nothingness and their consciousness just dissipates and there is nothing left. I don’t know.
3 comments
Honestly, from someone who has a lot of work related anxiety, I sometimes just go limp. Just stop caring about anything. You know, we’re damn near willing to die because we feel so bad and that means that nobody should have any say over us and who cares what they think. I’ve been thinking about it this way: when they give a criminal the death penalty it’s a big deal. It’s only for the worst crimes, there’s extensive litigation, moral questions and debates, etc. Yet here we are, legitimately wanting to die because of the anxiety nightmare we live in and we won’t even give ourselves the room to be less than productive at work. It doesn’t make sense. Our lives are important too. And we didn’t even do anything wrong.
I feel much the same as you. I also agree with DeepSpace, the best way to cope with it is to stop caring, as much as possible, and yes, the bosses sometimes seem to see through the facade but in the end it’s usually harder than you would think to fire someone.
Showing up counts for quite a bit. so I had a few anxiety attacks in the night, woke up two hours early for a meeting that I really didn’t feel up for. So I leaned into that, took my time making sure to eat and get hydrated. The meeting got canceled, I was allowed to structure my own day, and given the amount of side work I’ve been doing it feels okay to take it slow.
I have had days where I medically couldn’t come in. I got doctor’s notes, and by FMLA laws they had to accommodate to my needs. Heck, the change they made in my stress after that is worth at least a 20% raise (though I still feel about 20% underpaid)