For Certainty

I met Josh today. He doesn’t look like a Josh. Josh spent the beginning of the appointment talking about what the Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) consists of, what the rules are. Yes, there are rules. I had a hard time in the waiting room again. So, I’ll be honest the first few minutes of his speech sounded like the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons. I did stop him mid-sentence & asked him if he would give me a second to focus. I’m sure that when I asked questions I probably asked stuff that he had already told me. Whatever.

We got to the hard part of delving into the personal questions. I fell apart again, a few times. For whatever reason my anxiety was through the roof, I think he said that he added panic mood disorder to my growing list of diagnosis (what’s the plural of diagnosis?). Anyway, I could be wrong about that. The meeting with Josh overwhelmed me. The program is intense. It will include meeting four days a week for 4 hours per day some of the meetings will be group sessions. Thinking about the group sessions makes my hands start to sweat. 

I’ll be honest. I considered declining. When I got to work, I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t gonna do the IOP at all. I had already talked myself out of it in the 15 minutes that it took me to drive into my building. I was telling myself that I’m not that bad off. I don’t want to take the time off of work, the whole thing just isn’t necessary & I need to stop being ridiculous.

Then, something happened. I don’t want to write about it. Truthfully, I don’t want to fall apart for the billionth time. My eyes are welling up just writing this much. I will only say that my heart broke. I feel like I lost one of my only reasons to smile. It hurts. It’s my fault really. I should’ve known better. Well, actually I did know better but I didn’t want to pay attention. That doesn’t make me hurt any less. I actually lost it completely for a few minutes at my desk. Sobs escaped, panic ensued, I even crashed, and that is literally into a fairly attractive male as I was running for the ladies room. It was like a dramatic scene from a movie that just makes you feel so bad for the character on the screen. I was sobbing. It was embarrassing. I couldn’t even stay in the ladies room because it just wasn’t private enough for the storm. I walked, unsteadily through the tears that I couldn’t get to stop to the park next to our building. I cried for a good 20 minutes in a baseball dugout. I almost called several of you that I’m closest to here because I was that bad off. I felt too foolish though so I just sat there & cried it out.

At least, uncontrollably crying over what I know was foolish dreams & fake realities helped me decide that I need that IOP program. Whatever the reasons, & that’s what I don’t understand the most but I can’t do this alone anymore. As strong as I’ve always been, it’s just not enough anymore. I’m severely unstable emotionally. It’s been a hard day at work. I still managed to get some stuff done but my concentration is for shit & that slowed me way down.

I don’t have the time to go on. I do have to say, thank you to everyone again. I’ve been reading my faves who write almost every day, like I almost always do. I just can’t seem to come up with anything to say in the notes.