| Have you ever felt like your brain is older than your body and one day it's just going to give up? I feel like that a lot. It's not that I think I'm a genius or anything, I just think sometimes that my brain works too hard. I'm always thinking. It never stops. Sometimes, I can't even sleep because I can't stop thinking. That's part of why I write in here. It's my way of letting some of the stuff in my head out. It just gets too crowded in there. I'm happy to report that Dan got a better job. He doesn't like it that much, but it pays better than his last job and it has benefits. I don't like the fact that it's third shift, but I'm not complaining. I still don't have a job. I don't know if I'm ready. I have kind of a work phobia. It's not that I'm lazy. I just get nervous in work situations and have panic attacks. I think it's a control issue. When I'm at work, I'm not the boss. I have to be there when they tell me to and I can't leave even if I want to. I don't like that trapped feeling. It makes me feel like an animal in a cage that they've trained to perform menial tasks so they don't have to. The result for me is an incontrolable urge to leave. I have to get out of the building at any cost. This has cost me several decent jobs. I see a counselor for this and for depression and she thinks that it's biological and that once I find the right medicine, I'll be fine. I hope so. It's hard not living what most people consider to be a normal life. We can't really afford for me not to work, and yet here I am. I feel really guilty about it sometimes. Other times I just feel frustrated that nobody seems to know how to help me or understand me. I don't have too many people that I can talk to about it. Most people just don't get it. I've felt this way ever since Kindergarten, because let's face it, the only difference between school and work is the pay. I used to feel sick every morning before I went to school and would sometimes "freak out" when the car pulled up in front of the school. Everything within my being was telling me not to go. Some days, I fought my instincts and made it into the building and was fine. Other days, I just didn't have the energy to fight the animalistic urge to flee. It's a large burden to place on the tiny shoulders of a five year old. Especially since I didn't understand what was going on and didn't know how to explain it to anyone. I just lived with it. When I got older, I was able to explain it, but that didn't make much of a difference. People thought that I just didn't want to go to school. I was an excellent student making straight A's and actually liked to learn, but the inner turmoil I experienced at the start of every school day kept me home often. I still don't fully understand it, but I do know that part of it was that I didn't feel safe at school. I wasn't afraid of gunmen or physical abuse, but taunting, ridicule, embarrassment, and the feeling that I not only didn't belong there, but wasn't wanted there. Those are ligitimately difficult fears to come to terms with at any age, but I was especially vulnerable during my middle and high school years. Adolesence is a confusing time powered by a river of emotions. For me, the current almost pulled me under forever. |