wishes..

welp, taxes are filed and because my life is so simple (read: poor with no money to invest and no school/kids/crap) it took me about 15 minutes with the free turbo tax thingy.  i am not getting back as much as last year but it should help me catch up on some bills.  i think another thing that might help me catch up on bills is if i won the lottery.  i've been playing and playing and NOTHING.  it's so goddamn frustrating.  for the past few months, i've been off on thurs-saturday.  so three days off and a boring life means i watch too much tv.  is it weird that i like to have the tv on mute almost all of the time when i am home?  i will be on the computer with headphones on and the tv on mute.  maybe i am just way too american and wasteful.  anyway, this show came on about lottery winners and how their lives changed etc.  and one lady said she told her boss the day before that she might not be in the next day because she was going to win the lottery and she actually did.  so the next day she called and told him she was not coming in and he thought she was kidding but she was like "NO I'M NOT LYING!!!!, I'M RICH BITCH!!!" (something like that) so now when i play, instead of thinking i will jinx myself by telling people i will win, i just tell everyone.  "hey, homeless man, sorry about your rough life, but i'm fixin to be RICH!!"  just everyone.  so just to let you all know, i am going to win the lottery this week.

but for real, one day we will all be rich enough to buy all the things in our amazon.com carts.

but back to my boring life.  i'm sure i have spoken about it before but i have major major anxiety and it flares up from time to time but i think i have been dealing with this batch for almost a year now.  it's totally awful and crippling and life ruining.  it mostly happens in the car or when i feel totally trapped somewhere with no escape (like the bank line, or the grocery store line, or when someone is talking to me and i reeeeaaallly don't want to talk to them, or when i can't get off the phone with someone, or when everyone is counting on me to do something or be somewhere and they are all waiting for ME..but mostly in the car).  i have no idea why and i hate it.  my heart beats fast and my stomach drops and it feels like everything is closing in on me.  it doesn't matter if i'm out on an open road, it still happens.  but it is the absolute worst when there is any kind of traffic.  i feel trapped and there is literally not a single thing i can do.  if you take the anxiety out of the equation, i have no issue with driving.  when i was younger and i was having a bad day, i would hop in the car and just drive around with the windows down and the radio up.  i would drive for hours sometimes.  i would drive out to the lake and sit by the water.  driving just made me feel better.  and i'm certainly not scared of driving, i'm not scared of crashing or other people.  in fact, i'm a fairly aggressive driver; i speed a little bit and i yell at people out of the window when they are being ridiculous.  so why the panic in the car?  i don't know.  but it is so built up at this point that i would have a panic attack almost every day on the way to work and the way home.  i live 15 miles from my work, which is quite the difference from the old location which was 1.5 miles away.  it takes me about 25 minutes with traffic lights to get there and about the same to get back.  so now when i am about to go to work or about to leave i am waiting for it to happen.  i know i am making it happen.  i know all of that.  but i still cant make it stop.  i've gotten on medication before and i HATE the way it makes me feel.  it's not an all-the-time problem but there is not medicine i can take every time i get in the car that will wear off a half-hour later.  it just doesn't exist.

i have really been thinking a lot lately about how much this problem has changed me this year.  i see my friends much less and i have to make excuses to take my own car.  because the only thing worse than driving right now is driving with someone else in the car or GOD FORBID, someone else driving me.  from what i have read about this, that stems from the fear of having a complete panic attack in front of someone else and having them think you are crazy.  which i get.  but also if someone else is driving me, i have zero control of where the car is going and what the car is doing.  no way can that happen.  i was thinking a couple weeks ago that if this keeps up, i will end up missing out on tons of stuff in my life because of it.  i could never imagine having a kid and needing to rush them to the hospital for something and not being able to drive.  or getting married?  how could i ever live through the ceremony?  or what if i went on a honeymoon?  how would i fly?  yes, these are the things i think about when i am falling asleep.

so i've been digging around on the internet looking for vitamins that might help and apparently vitamin B is a good one for anxiety.  i went out and bought a ton of B vitamins; b complex and some others i thought i needed more of.  i read on several websites (i am too lazy to find and link them right now) that your body does not store vitamin B and you only get it from food you eat each day.  also, alcohol and nicotine deplete what you've got, so...i'm fucked with that.  but i've been taking it for about a week and a half now and i swear to god- i literally do not care if it is giving me some kind of placebo effect, i do not care at all.  but i feel like my entire mood is different.  i feel like i have tons of energy and a different mind almost.  in a week and a half, i feel so totally different, it's so bizarre. does anyone know if this is possible?  actually, please don't tell me if it's not.  i need this.  i was driving home from work tonight and i just took a deep breath, let out a sigh i have been waiting to sigh for a year and i just smiled and i felt happy.  because i was not flipping out and i was even letting my mind wander to OTHER things besides panicking.  it felt so...normal.  and that is something i have not felt for a long time.  i am not ruling out never having a panic attack again, and i am not saying i am cured.  but i have had a week and a half of peace.  and that is the best present i could have ever gotten, even more than winning the lottery.  i would choose to never have a panic attack again over winning the lottery.  even though i would have to really think about that for a while.
thank you vitamin B. thank you so fucking much.
i haven't told anyone about how much better i feel because i didn't want to jinx it.  i am probably too superstitious, but oh well.  i hope it keeps working.  i would be really grateful if it did.
 
xo


p.s. justin vernon (bon iver) retweeted my finger emoji tweet today.  i love that pretty much every encounter i have with him on twitter is ridiculous.