blammo

NOT the best weekend I've ever had. My panic attacks have come back with a vengeance, so most of the weekend was spent dealing with the shakes and their side effects at night and catching up on sleep during the day because the attacks won't let me sleep. Today, I feel like one big ache and yawn. And I was doing so well...

What's odd is that things have settled down. My work problems seem to be resolving. I did well in my first grad class, and I'm enjoying the second one. Fall is looking nice, although the hot weather needs to go. The fender-bender incident looks to be resolved on all sides. The air conditioner is fixed. I'm reading good books and watching good films and writing a lot. What is there to panic about?

The only explanation I can come up with is that these sudden attacks are aftereffects of the stress of the summer - rejected for one job, laid off from one job (both of these in the same company), dog died, got another job, new job not what it was supposed to be, started grad school, A/C breaks, minor car accident. You can't say my summer hasn't been lively. It's also change of season - I never do those well, and fall can't seem to make up its mind if it's here or not - it was positively sweltering yesterday.

I find that I can get through the stress of an event when the event is occurring, and then I fall apart afterwards. That's the only explanation I can come up with for this recent bout of attacks - accumulated stress results in one big episode of falling apart. And may I say, it sucks.

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and an acupuncture appointment on Thursday. I suspect the doctor will want to put me back on Zoloft and Xanax, and give me something to help me sleep, at least short-term. I hate pills. I really do. And what are they going to do to my writing? However, my life is not such that I can suddenly drop responsibilities to fall apart and recover. I have to keep functioning regardless of my body and/or mind rebelling, and in fact, keeping myself functioning means the panic doesn't get to take over my life. I consider pills a short-term solution to help pull myself together and get back to feeling stable. My biggest fear is becoming dependent on them.

I did manage to get out for a walk around the lake yesterday morning before it got too hot. That did me a lot of good - lake air, lots of animals, trees showing off a riot of colors, and interesting conversations to overhear. The best one was between two guys talking about their diets. Actually, it was one guy doing most of the talking about what he was and wasn't eating and when he was or wasn't eating and how much weight he'd lost (14 pounds). It was exactly the sort of conversation you hear from women, and for whatever reason, that made it all the more entertaining.

I also did all the reading for the next topic in my screenwriting class, and even managed a rough outline for the screenplay I have to write, so I'm a little ahead there.

Fortunately, today was a quiet day at work. I only had one 15-minute meeting and a chat with my office mate, who has decided to go back to her old job because they made her a great offer, and the rest of the day was spent editing.

What I need and want most of all right now is sleep - a good, deep, uninterrupted-by-my-brain-deciding-to-go-haywire sleep. On a regular basis. I don't think that's asking too much.