Snerkology
snerk (n): An utterance which suggests amusement/disgust/derision/disbelief.

Tag: anxiety

Head in the sand? Maybe.

I don’t want to know lots of things. Things that make the news. Things that ripple through Twitter and Facebook. Dark things. Grown-up things.

I don’t want to worry about the general collapse of life as I know it – governmental, financial, spiritual. I don’t want to be afraid that I have a good chance of getting cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers. I don’t want to worry about being alone in the later years of my life. I don’t want to be anxious over the state of my retirement while I’m still in my 30′s.

I just can’t follow every event, disaster, speculation, trend, statistic, and anticipated source of mayhem. I can’t draw the lines that all conclude vast conspiracies and evidence of the impending apocalypse. If I did, I’d be too afraid to live my life, too hopeless to make plans for the future.

I want to believe that life will be good a year from now, five years from now, twenty years from now. I want to have confidence that my goals, plans and dreams will come to fruition in their time.

I want the condition of the world to stop being so scary.

NaBloPoMo 2011

Pterodactyls

Not long after I filed for divorce (so this would have been back around the spring of 1997) I had to have some minor surgery. I recall laying on the gurney in the prep area while the med tech fixed me up with an IV. He fiddled around with things for a few minutes and I didn’t really pay attention to what he was doing until, prompted by a sudden and GLORIOUS relaxation in my midriff, I said to him, “You must have just started the sedative.”

He replied, “Yes, how did you know?” To which I responded, “The pterodactyls in my stomach are gone.”

I often look back upon that memory with fondness. Which may seem strange to you, but if you lived with a CONSTANT state of anxiety gripping your gut, one that exists for NO APPARENT REASON and NEVER GOES AWAY, you’d savor that memory too.

Fellow sufferers of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, let me hear an AMEN.

It figures.

Hmm. I was perusing back through my archives for this past year, and I just came to a realization. I haven’t had a panic attack, or the need to pop a Xanax, in months. It seems to coincide with the first time that I stopped taking the pill as my method of birth control (I had to go back on it for a few months, and now I’m off it again). Does anyone know if there is a correlation between anxiety/panic attacks, and the pill? A brief Google search indicates that there may be.

Great. I tortured myself for YEARS, saw therapists, and tried various forms of medication, and all I had to do was go off the fucking pill. FIGURES.

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Do you suffer from little knots of pain right in the base of your shoulder blades? Do this – place your hands at chest level, palms together and elbows out, kind like you’re praying or are about to bow to your Sensei. Press your palms together as hard as is comfortable, hold for three seconds, and release. Repeat five to ten times. I don’t know WHY it works to relieve the pain in my middle back/shoulder blades, but it does.

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How many of you did that just now, as you were reading it?

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I just finished the annual enrollment tasks for my health and insurance benefits through AcronymCo. If I just plain ol’ die, my husband stands to be comfortably well off. If my death is a result of an accident while traveling on business, he’ll get over a million dollars. Like, $1.18 million.

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him know that.

Note to self: Review Bill’s enrollment stuff. And sleep with one eye open.

(I KID! I kid.)

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And now we have a Democratic President, a Republican House, and a Democratic Congress. NOTHING is getting done in this country for the next two years, at least.

It figures.