This is how my week started…

It’s Monday, and I have been so incredibly, unbearably anxious and paranoid lately.

Like, crying at least several times every single day, for the past several weeks.

And I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t know why.

Well, I do know why.

I’m worried.

About everything.

I’m paranoid.

About literally everything.

About Bruce dying, losing my benefits early, getting back into the workforce, finding a job next year, having yet another episode, the bugs in my apartment, my car dying, money, my parents getting ill, not having many friends right now, not dating still, how expensive everything is, literally fucking damn near everything.

It’s like my mind won’t let me be even be content for more than a few, fleeting moments.

And my therapist was on vacation last week and still is this week.

So I just feel lost.

I feel very alone.

Even though I know I’m not really.

And I do it to myself.

And I know I can’t really be around many people still right now because I can’t handle it.

Or can I?

The thing is, when I do try to open up to folks I still have been picking the wrong people.

That entry I wrote the other week, about the person and the ride and them freaking out on me when I put a boundary up, was the last person I tried to make friends with.

It just feels like everytime I try to make a friend it blows up in my face and maybe that’s why I feel so doomy right now.

And Brucie’s health is failing.

I know that’s a big one.

I’m just fucking sad.

And I can’t snap out of it.

I called the nurse at my psych NP’s office to see if we could go up on my antidepressant.

I might be on the max dose already though, I’m not sure.

And I’ve had bugs in my apartment for the last few months.

They’ve been bad, then they’ve gotten better.

Been bad, then gotten better.

Been bad, then gotten better.

But recently they’ve been bad again and I’m starting to really fucking lose it.

I hate bugs.

I mean, hate bugs.

My Mom and Dad tell me that growing up, when I was really little, and they were building the house I grew up in, the black flies were really bad.

Like, really bad that year, and I guess I had a tough time.

We’re convinced that traumatized me to bugs.

Because I hate bugs.

I mean, I scream and holler when I see them.

I freak the fuck out.

I hate them.

I just got to the point where I’m able to kill these bugs with a tissue, as I’m hollering at them, but I need several tissues for one itty bitty bug because I swear to god if anything touches my hand or me I will freak the fuck out.

I wrote this super long text to my office manager over the weekend because on Thursday night/Friday morning I thought I had a bug in my ear, and how my mental illness is now in major play with these bugs.

It was my left ear.

I even went to the ED about it at 4am.

It felt, very suddenly, and woke me out of a dead sleep, like a small bug was trying to fly in the center of my ear.

I freaked tf out.

I dumped water in my ear.

I dumped vegetable oil in my ear.

Shoved a quip down there, both with and without the cotton on the end, and I was fucking with it enough I made my ear canal bleed pretty bad.

That was before I read online you shouldn’t shove a qtip in your ear so then that made me freak out more.

When I got to the ED, the doc looked down my ear canal and said it must’ve come out because he didn’t see anything.

Fuck, I thought.

Was that all a hallucination then?!

It could’ve been.

It also could’ve been my Cymbalta, my antidepressant.

Turns out that’s a possible occurrence or feeling or side effect while being on Cymbalta too – like you have a fly in your ear.

It happened to a friend of mine who reached out to me on facebook after I posted about this event.

Fucked up, right?

I mean, it could’ve been a bug too.

I do have bugs in my apartment right now.

But I shoved that quip in there so many times, it seems like I would’ve shoved it down into my ear canal if something was actually in there, ya know?

And it did feel like a “fly in my ear” more than anything, once my buddy described it that way.

That’s exactly what it felt like.

It’s now Friday and after I sent the long ass text message to my office manager over the weekend, she got the maintenance guys on my apartment straight away.

By Tuesday they were in here, recaulking my entire apartment and putting down a paste pesticide under the caulk and spraying after that.

I left for my parents house Monday evening at like 10:30pm or so after a bug crawled up on the couch for the first time.

I lost it.

I stripped off my clothes in the living room, hollering and everything, had the heeby-jeebys and all of it.

Fucking gross though, seriously.

That’s where I draw the line, them being on the couch.

It helped to be at my parents house.

It helped a lot a lot.

We had good conversations and it was nice to be around them for a couple of days.

I texted the office manager again in the morning telling her what had happened and asked her to make sure the guys get behind the couch too.

I think the bug came up on the couch because I had found a Brucie cookie and some crumbs under his bed again that’s right there, right to the right of my couch, right next to where the bug was.

See, Bruce loves to “bury” his cookies in blankets that I have on the floor for him for that purpose.

I have to go around once a week or so and pick them up and toss them, and vacuum and take his blankets outside and shake them out, but it’s good for him to do.

It’s a total dog behavior and he enjoys it.

It’s not hurting anything.

Anyway, I picked up his beds again on Friday night to make sure I didn’t miss anything and sure as shit, another cookie fell out.

So I picked it up and I noticed some more crumbs, so I reswept under the bed too.

So I think the bug was out of food and was looking for some and that’s why it was on the couch.

When I got home on Wednesday this week, I ended up throwing the bottom bed, just in case.

I noticed that it had some crumbs stuck to it and threw the blanket that was in that corner out too, just to be safe.

I’m not fucking around with these bugs.

So yeah, it’s been a fuckton of stuff happening and I haven’t felt comfortable in my apartment in several weeks now, since the bugs have gotten bad in the living room.

But the maintenance guys and gals came in and did a good job on Tuesday.

The apartment feels and looks cleaner.

It feels better in here.

Even though I’ve still been seeing some bugs.

Not as many, but they’re still around.

I’ve been keeping track in my notes app.

We have this state inspection on Monday so I’m leaving the office manager alone until that’s done.

And I’m giving the pesticide a chance to work too, it may take a couple of days.

I did end up calling my psych NP’s office about upping my Cymbalta a bit because of my recent constant sadness.

My psych NP is out of town right now but the other doc upped it a bit.

So hopefully this helps level me out a bit with all of these procedures and anesthetics too.

Hopefully.

I had a back ablation today too, ontop of everything else.

And I wonder why I’ve been stressed.

Sheesh.

Everything that could happen has been happening.

My car vents have been acting up, not blowing, then blowing type of thing, and in the TX heat, it’s not ideal.

Ontop of everything, I decided when I got home from my parents house that I need to stop vaping as much.

And that’s stressful too.

It’s been a year to the day where I haven’t smoked a cigarette, but I have been vaping.

Ugh.

Sounds annoying, but I need to.

So all of this shit is on my plate and I’m wondering why I’m so fucking emotional.

It’s only been a couple of days on the increased Cymbalta, but I’m feeling a bit better already.

I don’t want to not be able to emote again like on the Prozac, but this overly emotional shit has got to go.

It’s too much crying.

I’ve literally been crying at everything and anything.

I’ll watch a commercial and it’ll send me into tears for fifteen minutes.

It’s absurd, and I’m over it.

I don’t want the other extreme, to not be able to cry, but I’m tired.

Anyway, this week has gotten a bit better.

I’m grateful the bugs are being worked on now.

I feel like som headway was made now at least, so that’s good.

Now if I could quit vaping and my car would just miraculously be fixed.

– Keren