The Difference Is Different

I have been trying to figure out my shit for years now. I am not really any closer to identifying the person that I am or my interests, but I have come to one conclusion: I am fearful. I am afraid of change and afraid to take chances. I have always wanted to run away from the world I know, because living in a fishbowl is so depressing. Yet when I have the opportunity, I resist it and find my way back to my couch. There I have a comfortable blanket, a remote control, and the internet in my grasp. There is nothing in that world that requires me to change my behavior. I am cut off from the things that allow me to grow, both by choice and circumstance.

In 2017 I decided that I would ask my doctor about anxiety medication. It turns out that I have a really bad reaction to overthinking and my brain likes to put my body through this obstacle course of extremes. I get an accelerated heart beat, I start to sweat, I think that I am going to die, and I obsess over every small thing. I fell like I could go at any moment and my world starts to feel very small. The doctor gave me a prescription for something that helped ease all of that. He told me to take it before bed and then we would follow up on how things were going.

Fast forward to now, I no longer have insurance and I have not been able to get that prescription since April 2018. Ironically, that was when I was let go from my job at the help desk. At that time, I was frantic! I was worried that I would go back to feeling like I was feeling without being able to counter the feelings I was having. And then I started to feel the fear again. It hit me quickly that I was going to be broken and I wouldn't be able to fix myself in order to appear put together when I went out into the world. I was frantic, but I did my best to become aware of my alternatives. It seemed that St. John's Wort was one alternative to my problem.

I bought a bottle of St. John's Wort sometime in October/Nevember of 2018. I started working again and I wanted to be sure that I was getting the most out of my mentality. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking for a cure all pill, but I needed to feel something that wasn't claustrophobic or castrating in order to get through my day.I took it for a while, but I didn't really feel a change in anything and I stopped. I figured that I could get high off of my vape and that would curb my anxiety. Except that getting stoned doesn't really lessen my worry or anxiety so much as it works in reverse. My alternatives didn't help out...getting stoned was not really the cure all that I needed.

About a month ago I started taking my St. John's Wort again. The instructions on the bottle recommend 2 capsules, three times daily. I take it twice daily. For the first week I imagined that I felt a little calmer. I started to settle in my skin again. The second and third week, I felt a bit of that anxiety leave me. Now I am going into June...with a better sense of my anxiety, not letting it control me as much. I feel like I am losing myself though. There is a part of me that wants to feel something like sadness, but I am to dulled to imagine the sadness that I want to feel. It's not a bad thing honestly. I have gotten used to those feelings for so many years that it is hard to imagine life without them. It is hard to put into words the emotions that I want to course through my body while simultaneously experiencing an incredible surge of sorrow and sadness. Maybe my time in the hole has come to an end? Maybe I just need to focus on something else instead of trying to focus on how to be tortured and unloved. All I can really do right now is wonder how I can make a change for the better, and be an inspiration to myself.

I have the love in my heart and the pain that comes from holding back on that emotion. I get up every morning and I take my multi-vitamin, my recommended dose of St. John's Wort and I plan out how I am going to get through my day. I try to plan things for my days off so that I am not sitting on my couch wondering what in the hell I am going to do to get through my day. I am sort of reaching out to friends and family so that I don't feel so alone anymore, but I still end up being alone and dealing with my own shit. I still want to sell off everything that I own and get in my car and drive until I find a place that would be better suited for me. I want things to be so different than the way they are. I have to make that change. And I am still afraid of change.