Confession: I'm a nervous wreck

If it isn't already obvious, let me just throw it out there that I am a huge worrier.  Actually, I'll just cut the crap and admit that I have straight up anxiety.  Small things, past things, all things, it doesn't really matter, my brain just needs some type of fear to latch on to and get worked up about.

Usually it starts from some insignificant thought like "I need to pick up dog food after work today."  Totally normal, right?  But then my mind starts to gradually pick up speed and turn out shit like "How the hell are we going to buy dog food when Jon gets out of the Army?!  We're going to be broke and maybe end up living out of a shopping cart on the street!!  Homeless people love dogs though, so we'll fit in, right???  They'll accept us...maybe they'll take pity on us for being so newly homeless and share their dog food??  And we won't be able to take showers to maybe I'll have to grow out dreads???  Damn, our finger nails are going to get disgusting."  And so it goes.

I'd really like to say that I totally made up the melodrama of that scenario buutttt I didn't.  That whole thought process has really happened in my big ol' brain.
Thank God it's big because it gives me so much more room to worry.
Yeah, I'm sick.


Source

Anxiety has this nasty little habit of making you feel completely alone and, if I could sum up anxiety in one word, hopeless.  It rips away your self-assurance and leaves you feeling really scared and exposed, alienated.  It feels like you tried and failed and ended up three levels below everybody else on the planet, like the worst possible thing is going to happen because you are completely failing at life.

This morning I fell in to one of these sinkholes while driving to work.  The sun was out, the sky was blue, the grass was green and all I could think about was how much more money we need to save up before Jon gets out and, ohdearlord, what if he can't use his GI Bill and we can't pay the car payment and how am I going to buy all the Mexican food that I really need when we're back home and dead flat broke?*
*Note: Usually my anxiety-driven mental tirades are made entirely of panicked run-on sentences.

Everything in my world was fine yet I knew that I was going to fall apart and fail at life.  I was starting to get panicked and, if I must admit, really freakin' down, and it was only 7:30 in the morning.  I could feel stress starting to creep over my shoulders and down my spine in an attempt to smother me like a scratchy wool blanket in the middle of summer.

Then Jon drove passed me in his little red car, fanatically waving and smiling at me.  He was driving some of the guys around so they were all pressed up against the windows waving and smiling too.  And I was reminded that, you know what, I am not alone.  Not even in my stress and my failure and my falling apart.  This thought changed everything for me.  Right away my brain short-circuited, my mouth dropped open (literally) and those scary, tormenting thoughts ran away.  My world was righted.

I know that I'm again sounding unecessarily melodramatic, but it's all true.
There's this pretty damn cute guy that, even when I want to break a plate over his head, is my absolute best friend.  We fight, sometimes pretty badly, and have gone days without talking to each other, but I know that because of him I will never be alone.  He'll be there to deal with my spit phobia, incessant talking on long drives and whenever I get a case of the crazies.


This is all about anxiety but I guess it's all about relationships too.  They make my world, and even THE world, go round.

I don't know what I'd do without that ginger fella.

Linking up with Vodka and Soda