Waiting

I’m feeling very alone tonight, despite having had an reasonable amount of human interaction in more than one location with more than one person. I’m experiencing a fairly high level of distress and I don’t yet know why. I started writing to figure it out, but it’s not really going.

Turns out it’s mostly about waiting. I’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately. Not the sort of slow-burn anxiety that I’ve spent years learning to cope with, where I’m holding on to a priority over days and months trying to push it into existence one inch at a time. That kind is hard, but can see it happening, and I usually know how to get help when I need it. There’s a little of that going on, as there always is, but it’s definitely on the decline compared to recent weeks.

But I have been doing an enormous amount of straight up on-call waiting. Waiting for things to be delivered or picked up or for someone to call me back or to have normal household goods or services. Not being able to plan supper in advance or to know when I can schedule future appointments. Reactively trying to make all those things happen and still live the rest of my life and do my day job. None of them are necessarily “hard” individually, but boy am I fucking ready to be done with managing all these things.

And collectively it’s trigger my waiting anxiety — an anxiety that I need to be going down, because it’s been at threat-level Alonzo for weeks. So part of my problem is just the disconnect between events that should (and do) bring relief and the more normal, short-term stress of moving and setting up a household and establishing a new routine.

Also I’m just finally in the past day or two getting to someplace where any kind of routine is plausible. Where I can even imagine planning sleep in a reliable way, or addressing my weeks of deficit. And that never helps.

I’m still waiting for some things. The appeal is in and no longer a barrier to action, but the result might be a while it’s still anxious waiting. Next steps are happening but they’re still at “getting pointed up in the right direction” and some time from “establishing a useful routine”. And of course I’m both anticipating being home and fearing that my time away will feel like more waiting, or worse that I’ll cause delays. I’m even waiting for a potential new therapist to actually schedule me instead of exchanging one piece of information every couple of days in the world’s slowest game of book-a-session. Those would all be hard even without moving and sleeping poorly and arguing with delivery services and not having heat or cooking or emergency supplies or Dog.

So I need to manage my day-to-day stress better. I’ve been ignoring it for as long as is plausible, and while that was the right choice while in crisis it’s a backlog I need to address instead of assuming it will work itself out. Sometimes I might even need to dedicate time to it proactively — not exchange the small bit of time I have for one type of coping with another but actually find more — and certainly I need to consider as a factor when dealing with my feels, so I can more readily understand what’s happening to me.

To wit, I should not do this alone. While it’s work, and not fast, one of the things I need to build in this home is an integrated social environment. Because I need the people physically around me to help with my stress and anxiety not just in the big-picture way that we’ve finally started to become comfortable with, but in the “help me make this a 2-minute stress instead of a 2-day issue” way that everyone needs and I am currently isolated from. That we’re both historically isolated from and that we both likely need to practice, so I’ll see if I can make that happen more. Or at least more carefully explain my intent and needs, so I can have help doing it for myself.

I do feel like time management is on the upswing. Still pretty variable and reactive but today I was able to get out for a haircut* [fig 1] during normal business hours and back home before supper. Last night I figured out how to get to a drug store on the bus and now can buy things other than convenience store snacks almost 24/7. Friday I’m planning to add a new recurring activity to the list. And I’ve managed at least some real work for like 2 days in a row (and plausible if somewhat fake work for another).

And there was plenty of good talking and doing today. Many pragmatic things accomplished — insurance and a TV and a desk chair and more unpacking and laundry and financing and household shopping and planning for all sorts of short-term needs. Talking was good too, and even got to real life topics without any hassle. I got thoughts about scents and fashion and an offer to learn about makeup — a thing I’ve always wanted but couldn’t find the sort of trauma-aware instruction I needed — and I think even the beginnings of a book discussion, which I could get a lot out of. So I should (and do) feel pretty good about all sorts of social things that happened today. I just need to remember that complications in daily life are hard in aggregate, even when they aren’t individually terribly anxious.

Shanda made it to Chicago and I think is having a good time other than the usual stresses of travel. Dog seems to have been picked up, though I haven’t heard anything about it first-hand; typically I’m satisfied with silently returning 0 but when stress is high affirmative feedback feels more important. DerbyK lived up to their namesake and seems really satisfied about it, though you also picked up your own waiting anxiety today in the form of a pending request for “help” from someone who actually only wants your assistance in their self-abuse.

As you can read I’m still only half put together but I’m feeling well enough to sleep decently, and better sleep will make tomorrow easier.

ZiB

*Some of those hairs have been cut further than they have been in a decade, since well before I moved to Seattle. I’m not sure I like it but I’m glad to have had it done, even if I’m likely to grow it right back. Plus I paid someone else to do it, which is a great since shaving long hair is a slow, messy business and we’re still pretty short on both cleaning capability and patience.

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