Ugh

Anxiety is a bitch. I can't really recall when I started noticing that I sometimes feel anxious, wait, that may not be entirely true. I do remember my second semester of freshman year in college having a short lived panic attack about money and planning for housing the following year. But now the anxiety isn't a worry, its a feeling. Its physical. Its emotional. And it sucks. I can take deep breaths and chug a bottle of water because sometimes that helps. I can walk around or go to the gym because for me anxiety feels like a lot of built up energy that needs to be burned off. But that doesn't alleviate it. The most frustrating part of it, at least what is going on today, is that I can think of one pretty quick way for it to go away. But I don't have control over that. Which is probably part of the reason for the pain of it. Without making it worse, I don't know how I can try to make it better. I feel like I'm constantly praying to God to give me strength, clarity, patience, help, support, comfort, that one specific request. But none of those come. Which increases my frustration. I spiral from frustration to almost hysteria. Its remnicent of the bad days from the Ex. Crying and sobbing and maybe an occasion scream out loud. Its stuck in the back of my throat and tears are just waiting to spill. I don't know what to do...

Heart ache

It dawned on me tonight that it would be more than difficult for me to seek out counseling services for myself since the area that I live in is very small and has limited resources and I'm in the field. I came to this conclusion while going through in my mind the same thing that pretty much always comes up when I'm alone. The fact that I'm alone. A lot. And lonely a lot too.

I've tried to analyze myself. My past choices in men/boys. The patterns. The reasons. The motivations and the pay offs. The problems. The searches. The limits my environment and my personality place on me. I've listened to feedback from friends, family, and relative strangers. I've asked some difficult questions to people who I know will, and do, give me honest answers. The best I've uncovered so far is that where I live is completely noncondusive and if I were to weigh less I might have better odds.

Thing is, dissecting it is all well and good, but it doesn't make me any less lonely. I have moments of pure ache in my chest and every time I breath my eyes spill tears that won't be held back. It hurts my heart and soul to know that in spite of all the well wishers and friendly stories, no one really can be sure that my whole life won't be spent alone. Alone and searching. I don't even understand how to not search, otherwise that would at least be a change of pace in this dark and difficult hallway. The what if  I don't find "the one" question seems to be looming larger and larger each time I see my brother and sister with their respective others. And my happily paired up friends tell me about planning for another child or another move or a new house or another marker of their adulthood and progression in life. While I just search and wait and try not to cry every single time I feel rejected. Because I'd be in tears too often to do anything else.

Wahhh Wahhh Wahh

I like to write. I don't care so much to read what I've written, at least not right away. I do, however, like to come across things that I've put down into words long ago and remember exactly how I felt or what was going on in my life at that moment. For some reason there are really powerful emotions that fill my head when I come across a poetry notebook from college or an email to an old friend during a difficult time in our lives. It makes me want to write more. And when I read some of my favorite books, I want to be able to do what those authors do. I love to get so engrossed in a novel or memior or young adult series that I can't stop until I know the ending.

Then there are days when I get frustrated with life. I don't mean all of life. I have a pretty easy go when you look at it objectively. But I keep finding myself lonely. And to avoid becoming bitter or whiny, I try to be mindful about who I say what to. I don't need everyone who knows me to know that my heart literally aches sometimes. My eyes burn from tears that hurt to cry. I want to scream and cry and hit things. I pray to God that instead of patience and understanding, He give me an actual answer about what this all means. I've got too many fond memories of crying myself to sleep because I just don't understand it. And I don't really want to understand why, I just want it to be different. I want there to be a man in my life who is amazing. I want to find love. I want love to find me. I don't like being lonely. I don't like this chest pain and tear stained t-shirt. I don't care to be able to entertain myself forever. I know that if it happens that I am alone in the long term, I'll be ok. I've got some pretty amazing role models for that. But I can't imagine that that's what God has planned for me.

Before I get too bogged down in the anxiety and sadness that this topic tends to drudge up, I'm going to stop. The lovely and damning thing is, there is only so much that I alone can do to remedy this situation, and I can do almost nothing this late into a Sunday evening. But if I can do one thing, it would be to keep writing and finding new things to write about. Maybe through that I can find somehting else that keeps me occupied and lively. I also need to remind myself to continue being on the path of improvment for my entire being. Again, maybe through that I can also improve my chances of not becoming a lonely spinster, one way or another.