The breakdown

It happened today.  My disability disabled me.  Sure, all of the disabling was what led me to get diagnosed in the first place, but it hasn't happened since starting medication.

Let's backtrack a bit.  In October of last year, I dropped out of all of my classes due to overwhelming anxiety.  I couldn't do my projects or even get sleep.  I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, started meds, did some counseling and moved on with life.  Sure, I'm still an anxious person, but I'm generally in good spirits about it.  Anxiety saves lives.  It forces me to be prepared for the absolute worst.  It's hoping for the best that I struggle with, but the boy scouts would be so proud of me.  I think there's a branch of the military with the "Be Prepared" motto as well.

Anyways, as a special educator (graduating soon, yay!), I'm supposed to be all gung ho about embracing disabilities and blah, blah, blah.  Let's face it, people.  This is something that prevents me from doing things that so called "normal" people can do no problem.  I'm not too big on being all "Yay! I totally freak out at the mere thought of misfortune!"  Sure, there's nothing wrong with me, but that doesn't change the fact that it's annoying as all get out and today it hit hard.


I recently decided to stop taking my birth control pills because I don't take them regularly.  What's the use of irregularly regulating your hormones?  So now my ovaries are screaming, "Why should I have to do this?! I haven't had to make estrogen in like 5 years!" and my hormone levels are all over the place.  Turns out making estrogen is not like riding a bike.  I randomly cry.  Today I randomly cried and then cried about how I was randomly crying.  "Normal people don't do this!" I said to myself.  I was quickly overcome with guilt.

No special educator should say anything like that.  It's true.  There is a majority and a minority.  The majority of people can stop themselves from randomly crying or hyperventilating or vomiting about situations that occur on a daily basis.  I can't and it infuriates me.  Even though my anxiety is under control (for the most part) I can't control my emotions.  And while we're on the topic, that's a terrible saying.  No one can control their emotions.  I'd like to be able to control my responses to my emotions, though.  I blame the saying for my anger.  It implies that I should be capable of controlling the natural feelings I have at various times. 

I guess that's how I handle things.  I blame other things for the issues I have that are not under my control.  I used to be really good at finding silver linings, like always being more prepared than the boy scouts, but I seem to have lost my flair. 

That's my goal for this blog.  I want to find my flair again.  Sure, I'll be writing about my anxiety (and I haven't even gotten to the angst yet.  That part comes from my 6th graders) but I'm hoping to get some insight into myself here.  My anxiety causes my mind to go a million miles a minute but I can only type so fast.  It focuses me and forces me to fixate on what I'm really trying to say.  So, I guess if you're reading this, you're getting the real me.  I'll do my best to keep it that way.  Unedited and uncut. I won't even go back and read this until I hit the "publish" button. 

Be prepared tip of the day:  Knowing your emergency exits is only half of being prepared.  A truly anxious person also knows where to hide when the exits are blocked.  I've lived in four different places in the last year.  If an axe murderer came in and I couldn't get out, he'd never find me ;)