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

things i need to do that are terrifying me right now:
-call all my campers' parents
-call back the passport office
-get everything together for our first week of camp
-set up an appointment with a dentist
-figure out what immunizations i will need for travel
-contact some strangers at a tai chi club so i can return the book this guy from my old church lent me because he was so excited about me going to china
-set up dates to meet with friends next week while i'm catsitting so i don't do anything stupid
-going to the police station to get a new background check done

Jesus fucking christ I just poured out my whole summer's worth of angst and hope and the internet ated it.

Actually the things you listed sound very prudent, foresight-ful, and grown up.

I'll bet that others will put off those very things, and panic at the last minute to get them done. But that's okay: it is their journey.

When I am feeling fear and anxiety to take an action, I will bookend with a friend: I'll send a text or email, explaining what I am choosing to do, how I am feeling (often describing the feeling on a scale of 1 to 10), and then promise to follow up after I attempt and/or complete the action.

I don't see anything you wrote as pretentious. I see forethought and grown up behavior. I know it will all turn out okay.

K, going to try to recap the major points of the post that got eaten, because I feel both very fearful and very hopeful right now and I think it will be valuable to have a reference point for the rare moments when I can hold those two in tandem and kind of basically deal:

-I was animated today. I may have been an (over)animated corpse with 0 social graces, but I was animated. Progress.
-I feel more-or-less safe about being alone in the catsitting house, and in some ways like it will be better than being with my parents for the next week. It's a less isolated location so I'll be able to put myself in the presence of other humans if I need to. It's also walking distance to the ER is things get dire, although now would be an exceptionally bad time to get myself stuck in hospital. (Although yes, I have the presence of mind to realise it will be equally if not more inconveniencing to my work team if my body shows up in the river right before the season starts.)
-Feeling excited but anxious about camp beginning on Monday. 7 weeks of needing to be highly present and competent, including doing a lot of things I've never done before. Worried about being the dud counsellor when I'm supposed to be the experienced one (at least you'd think that would be the advantage of giving a job designed for a seventeen-year-old to somebody in her late twenties).
-Although it's draining, I do feel that spending workdays in kid-time is healthy for me in many ways. The combination of how present-oriented and enigmatic they are. The fact that they haven't yet given up on having a theory of the world. An impossible but healthy project, I think?
-Feel guilty about the idea that I maybe look to the kids for validation. On the one hand I can think of it as feeling fulfilled serving my role in the community, because clearly I have nothing to offer adults. But then is that a faulty justification, and the kids would be much better off with somebody who understands more about being a person, since that's the main task they're apprenticed in.
-I have one seat at a very big table in their lives, and only for 7 weeks. I am weaker than I'd like, but I am benign. They will survive the summer and so will I. That is all I need to do for now.

Man, making lists is KEY. Good job ghostmouse. If you've got the time for it, just cross one off a day. I took this yoga class once where the guy kept telling us to "under achieve." Sometimes it helps me to remember that when I'm freaking out. Especially if I have a list and a little time, reminding myself it doesn't all have to get down at once helps. OR sometimes if I have a lot of things I hate doing I'll try to get them done in order of awfulness all in one day so I only feel shitty for one day instead of extending the awful over many. And then I give myself a day off if possible as a reward for being brave.

"Actually the things you listed sound very prudent, foresight-ful, and grown up." - oak

I totally agree. Sounds like you're taking smart steps, protecting yourself, and handling difficult things very maturely. Keep it up!

First day of camp. Tired in a good way. & then I came home to news on the book front! Well, pre-news. But GOOD pre-news a far as i can tell. An editor who seems really great at a press I'd swoon to be published by wants me to revise & resubmit. Very far from being any kind of sure thing, but HOLY SHIT.

Catsitting is being a good thing for me. Felt depressed yesterday, but the lazy kind, not the suicidal kind. It made me think how similar the two must look from the outside. That's so strange. The difference between "I don't know how to move" & "i don't know how to live."

congratulations on the book front! woo hoo! Camp and cat-sitting sound like a purrrfect summer to me. (you can hate me for that, puns are a guilty pleasure I know only I get the kick out of). Seriously though, way to keep moving forward

Are you kidding? I'm a camp counselor! All puns all the time!

all the puns all the time...well...i had to.
http://fad-nation.com/273/animals-making-puns/?r=aut313

Niiiiice.