Anxiety, the fickle cunt.

Yesterday was good, anxiety wise. I had what I have long called a "creamy" feeling all day, in that my brain chemicals were easy, mellow, I had the beginnings of a smile on my face all day (despite being hungover and physically tired from having walked 8 miles and danced two hours the day before), and things like listening to sad songs just made me wistful, not upset in any way. Creamy has always been what I call this because it's like the feeling of sour cream with something spicy; the spicy is there, still, but the milky kindness of the sour cream tempers it, soothes it, renders the potential ass-kicking of the spicy inert. It feels so very, very nice. Days like that, in the midst of a tumultuous time, are rare, and I treasure every moment. I relish the softness of my heart's beating, the ease in my belly, the lack of racing thoughts in my brain. I walk gently through the day and I may even turn a pirouette or two in the kitchen in the midst of cooking or washing dishes.

Today, I've awakened with a different feeling, and it's just as simple as that. A different feeling. It's nothing I've done, nothing anyone else has done, and there's little to be done to effectively change it but to be aware and vigilant about not letting it get worse. Today, I can tell I shouldn't have too much caffeine (just enough to stave off the headache from withdrawal), and that it's going to be a day of intermittent little pep talks to not let the heart start racing, or get into bad thinking, and that I'll have to listen to bouncy music to ensure my mood doesn't crash. I'm not upset in any way, I'm actually quite fine. It's a purely physical sensation. My heart is primed for battle. My limbs feel slightly tingly. To say I'm "on edge" would make the feeling sound altogether too aggressive, but it's definitely the feeling of waiting for something to happen. Something baaaaaad. Is this dread? It may be best defined as existential dread. hm. Funny, I'd not considered that before.

And, on days like this, it's likely nothing will happen. It's easy, when I feel this way, to feel like somehow I knew it was going to be a sucky day if something shitty happens, but it really is more so that because of the chemicals my brain is pumping, unfairly, out to me, my reactions are going to be shittier, thereby casting a pall of shit over it all should something go awry. Yesterday, I could have taken things in stride without much effort. Today, it will be a consortium of minutiae gathering to ensure that IF something that could upset me happens, that I react as calmly as I would have yesterday.

It's fucking hard to deal with chronic anxiety. Even on a good day, even on a great day, when I'm calm as fuck and I don't feel a whit of heart thumping panic on the horizon, it's still something I've learned to to do constant checks for a hint of, because things could flip flop at any time. On one hand, it does make me relish, as I did yesterday, each moment where things are easy. On the other, it means that not a minute goes by that I'm not making sure things are still okay.

I work hard on this. All the time. I've gotten myself to a point where, though the anxiety is still ever present, I can fairly easily react as if the anxiety isn't there. It might take me a few moments to pause, assess, and find the right words, but I have learned to be measured instead of impulsive, for the most part. I spoke to my therapist the other day about how hard I work on diplomatic responses to situations I feel emotionally about. He asked for an example, and I gave him the most recent one I could think of, which was my response to a male friend I've shared an emotional, romantic relationship with the past year, who is now single and pursuing one of my best friends. When I confronted him about this, he neither denied nor confirmed his interest in her by saying, "Would you be mad if I had a crush on her?" I didn't have an immediate, non-emotional answer (for the record, the emotional answer would have been, "Fuck you, of course I would be"), so I took a few moments, discussed things with my roommate, and responded, "I think, given our history, that that would be an inappropriate course of action." When I said this, my therapist near to guffawed. He said it sounded like something Kissinger would have said, a reference I don't understand as I haven't much knowledge of the man, but my therapist went on to say, still laughing, that that was, indeed, a terrifically diplomatic way of saying what I mean.

Five years ago, such a response would have been almost impossible for me. Three years ago, I would have put on my Fuckit™boots and chosen the emotional answer 75% of the time. Now, unless I'm just completely ready to throw down with someone, emotional answers be damned, I will almost always choose the measured, diplomatic response. In some ways, it makes me feel trapped inside myself, but that's the burden I've got to bear to be functional. Daily, exhausting work, dealing with a mental illness.

Writing this has eased the heart a bit, and with some jaunty tunes and a proper stove scrubbing, I may find this day is not entirely lost to brain management. Alrighty then. To the kitchen I go.