Setbacks

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, panicked because I realized I had forgotten to tuck in the ends on the middle of my last spiral, which, in real life, is not that big a deal. I also couldn’t remember if I’d approved my assistant’s timesheet–again, not a big deal in real life, because the system sends a reminder Monday mornings if you forgot to do it on Friday.

As I was laying there, the orange cat came over and demanded head scratches. I became convinced, utterly convinced, that this was not my cat, that it was some strange cat that had been coming into the house at night and sleeping with me and, if I turned on the lights, there would be this stranger.

I was completely panicked about it. And then I thought, this is insane. How would a strange cat be this comfortable? Why would the dog be so nonchalant about it? And then I was like, oh, yes! This is insane! You are having anxiety. And that dissipated it.

But a thing that’s been very hard and embarrassing for me to admit through this whole process is that I do have a lot of obsessive weird thoughts, which bother my life, and which I have just assumed were normal things everyone goes through, so, if I can function, why bother to worry about them? But waking up from a dead sleep and becoming convinced a strange cat is demanding head scratches from you is not really functioning.

Still, I find it deeply embarrassing, though I don’t know exactly why, to realize how much of my adult life was me being all “I’m utterly normal except for these few things, but I understand them and avoid them and all is well,” when really I have been fucked up in this minor but affecting way that I was just ignoring.

Anyway, I know part of it is that I fucked up my medication this weekend. And part of it is just the disappointment in getting rejected. But this weekend felt like backsliding. And that sucks.