Hi.

I don’t really know what I’m doing right now.

I have too many feelings and they’re much too big.

I tried Zoloft for a couple months. It didn’t help me. I’ve started a temporary anxiety medication before taking an off-brand of Wellbutrin and my anxiety has gone down so tremendously that I barely notice I still have it. With the anxiety has gone my need for perfectionism, which means I’m back to procrastinating homework instead of getting it all done as soon as I can. That’s a bit stressful. But at least I can sleep.

I mean, kind of.

Oh, I have so many big feelings.

One of my classes is a social media marketing class. It’s my favorite. The students actually have discussions on the discussion boards and my instructor and I are basically pen pals and everything we’re learning is immediately irrelevant to me. I’m enjoying it. As I go through and do these assignments and projects, I’ve been coming up with all these ideas for how to market myself and create the platform I want. Unfortunately most of the ideas aren’t actually ideas yet. They’re just big feelings that I don’t know how to interpret into action. I’m trying to be patient and let them come to life on their own time but I’m not even sure that’s the best way to do this. Maybe I should be trying harder. But lately, trying harder is hard. Trying in general is hard.

I’ve barely slept in weeks.

It’s the anxiety. My new therapist helped me realize that I’m dreading tomorrow because I’m dreading today. I can barely handle it all. I’m not doing enough. I’m not doing anything. That’s because I barely have the energy to make it through today, and I know tomorrow is going to be the same, so I don’t want tomorrow to come. I dread tomorrow. I dread it so much that I can’t fall asleep, that some part of myself forces me to stay awake. I haven’t been sleeping until between four and six in the morning. I’ve gone through this several times in the past but it never lasted longer than a couple weeks. It’s been six or seven. Not only does the lack of sleep make me more exhausted, but the anxiety has been giving me vivid nightmares, which doesn’t help. And the exhaustion from the lack of sleep contributes to the anxiety and the process just continues.

It hasn’t been as bad since I started this new medication. But it still hasn’t been easy.

I mean, look at me. It’s after 3am right now.

The breathing problems don’t help. I went to the ER a week after my daughter was born because I woke up after an hour of sleep and my throat was so swollen I could barely breathe. The ER did nothing for me. According to the many tests they did, including a CT scan and X-ray, there was nothing wrong with me. I sat there for hours leaking milk because I couldn’t nurse after they injected me with dye for the CT scan, all while my mother-in-law sat next to me with my daughter and my neighbor spent hours watching my son without any warning before we asked him. Honestly, he’s a godsend. So is my mother-in-law. Back to the story, though. This happened in the first week of March. My throat, tonsils, parotid glands, and tongue have all been swollen on and off since then. I’ve had to stop working out because it’s gotten so hard to breathe. I’ve felt like passing out on and off for the last several days. I don’t feel like I’m getting enough oxygen. My doctor’s appointment is on Monday and I don’t have much faith in the ER at this point. I saw an ENT last week and he was the opposite of helpful, so even less helpful than that first ER visit. And anyway, all of this has contributed significantly to my anxiety and depression. Not only am I too anxious and depressed to do anything, I’m anxious and depressed about whether I’ll pass out or exhaust myself completely if I get up to do the simplest of things. I’m barely managing to take care of my kids and I don’t think I can handle more than that.

Really, there are so many more things going on than that. This is a hard phase of life for so many reasons. (And here’s where everyone says “and it’s even harder for everyone right now because of the pandemic.” I know it’s been rough on a lot of people but it’s only had positive impacts on my way of life, I promise.) Finances have been another huge stressor. I’ve been unable to work because of physical and mental health. I don’t know how to make more money as an author. I’m coming up with all these ideas as an author but I don’t want to be an author to sell books. I want to be an author to change people’s lives for the better. I realized I can also do that as an influencer. But I still also want to be an author. And I need to make money somehow if I’m going to do either. Somehow I know I can make this work but I don’t know how yet. I have too many feelings and too many ideas that haven’t made it past the tip of my tongue and I’m just too plain exhausted to put more effort into this yet. Thinking about where to start overwhelms me. Thinking about most anything overwhelms me. I feel stuck. But I also feel like I’m on the brink of making good progress for the first time in a long time, so this isn’t a bad stuck like I was stuck in before. Now, most days, I can actually feel hope.

Most days. Not all days.

I still have really, really bad days. I still have days when I think it would be better if it all ended. I still have days when I wish more than anything that I had the courage to do whatever was necessary to end it all.

But things are getting better. And I have hope that they’ll continue to get better.

Things will be a lot better once I can start falling asleep at a healthy time and not be so physically drained.

I want to get better at having a presence online. Here, on my Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter. Maybe Snapchat too. I’m thinking about it.

I have a lot of mindset shifts I need to make first.

But I’m working on it.

For now, I should try to get some sleep.

 

P.S. I’ve started a shop and have some fun new graphics up! You can check it out here.

Also, don’t forget I have books for sale! Honestly I don’t want to go pull up the link because just want sleep but you can look my name up on Amazon. I also have that link up in multiple places around this blog. Sorry for the inconvenience. Though I would be very pleasantly surprised if anyone is even interested. It has not been a lucrative year.