YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

i deepiy enjoy being troubled. just letting you know

Troubled and drunk does have its upside.

now i'm home and clean and safe. i had a good time being out and talking to people. one small thing i wish that my former manager (now i'm in a different department) wouldn't make jokes about me being drunk and making bad decisions and going home with him (or something along those lines). it makes me feel bad and small and like i'm a bad feminist bc i can't evn talk back to someone harassing me in a relatively low-stakes situation like that. not a good feeling. but i did have a good time.

Loving your candour and honesty over here.

Today I woke up around noon (thanks hangover!) and got a few things done. Picked up a book that I've been wanting to read from the library, went on a long walk for some exercise, spent a good amount of time cleaning my room and finally taking care of the piles of laundry all over the place. Called back the therapist that I've been trying to get an appointment with because she hasn't contacted me yet, so I hope she'll get back to me. I didn't worry a lot about my writing today and I feel okay with that. I did the best that I could today.

Something that's troubling me is that my stress is affecting me physically. I've felt tired for a long time, but now I'm having moments where my legs feel weak, like I had run a marathon. I feel weak and shaky sometimes. It must be the stress, because I'm sure as hell not working out enough to have those feelings.

Social anxiety got the best of me today, lads...Was going to hang out in a Starbucks and write but it was too crowded and I couldn't make myself go in, so then I went to the library but it was closed, so I made a sad round trip and came back home where I belong. Didn't get any work done, of course. How can I be so simultaneously stressed out and completely apathetic about this grad school thing.

Stress and apathy are complements on the perfectionist's survival tool belt. If you're like me, you try and try and try, smash headlong into the "absolute certainty" that you're going to fail, and then tell yourself that you didn't care that much in the first place.

Heck, it's such a normal fact of human existence that Aesop wrote a fable about it 2,500 years ago.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but you're still human.

No, anything but human!

Yeah, I know. I always hate being the one to break the news.

PS—writing that reminded me of something. Soon after I quit drinking, I learned about an 800-year-old Chinese form letter that Imperial officials would send after getting stupid drunk at a function and making an ass out of themselves. The saying goes, "if there's a name for it, at least one other person has done it. If there's a law against it, LOTS of people have done it." I add to that, "if there's a form letter apologizing for it, it's totally ordinary."

Ha ha ha did no work on my writing today! Didn't talk to anyone! This is insanity!

More anxiety, worry, unhappiness.