Anxiety Part 1

Hubby’s laptop needs it’s ass kicked. He has this old Compaq laptop that’s like 6 years old. It’s still a great little laptop but it’s getting funny about booting sometimes. Sometimes you have to take out the drive and/or battery and put it back in. Unplug it and plug it back in, tonight it booted when I shook the cord around to make sure it really was plugged in. *shrug* It works, I can sit my ass in the bedroom in front of the TV and type in my OD. So here I sit.

Hubby is at school right now. I hate these damned night classes. I get really anxious when I have to be home alone after dark. You’d think I’d be used to it. I was a latch-key kid. Both my parents worked. My step-dad left for work around 3pm (he worked nights), before I got home from school and my mom would get home around 5pm. It was kind of cool having my step-dad work nights though because he was there all day (until 3) when I was out of school for the summer, I got to stay home and didn’t need a babysitter.

Once I moved in with my dad I’d spend entire nights in the house by myself. My dad and step-mom would leave on camping trips on Friday nights. Since I was in marching band and had to attend football games on Friday nights I couldn’t go with them. I’d come home around 11pm to an empty house, there would always be directions on the dining room table for me. I’d get up the next morning and drive out to meet them at the campground and stay Saturday night, then follow them home Sunday afternoon. It was a good experience for me, staying alone all night in the house, driving to unfamiliar places and stuff. It seems kind of wasted now though, I feel like my anxiety has caused me to lose all those steps towards independence I took from 16-18. Things really went downhill after I got rear-ended on the way back from one of those camping trips. I started having panic attacks after that and I still have trouble driving, even though I know I’m an excellent driver.

Anyway, I didn’t get on her talk about my driving anxiety, which I am working on, and I am actually improving! I get so anxious when I’m here alone at night. I liked the first place we lived, hubbys dad lived downstairs the second place we lived was good too because our landlord lived right upstairs and he was almost always home. Now we live all alone in a house with neighbors far enough away that they may not notice if something happened. Gun shots are something that you hear all the time here too, nothing out of the ordinary, even fairly late at night. Our neighbors shoot in their yard and down behind our house and stuff. I worry that if something did happen no one would even notice until it was too late. *shrug* I don’t know why I think something even would happen. I guess I’ve just always felt like a target. I was always picked on in school. I was almost kidnapped as a kid. People in Hartford have even bothered me, I won’t walk alone in Hartford anymore, not since this guy got up in my face and said “What are you lookin’ at? huh?” I hadn’t even looked at him, I just exited a store and started walking down the sidewalk, I always look at the ground. When I sped up he called after me “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” He even followed me for two blocks all the way to the plaza that leads to our building. He stopped when I started hauling ass up the stairs, I turned when I got to the top and saw him walking away. It was the damn middle of the day too. I was shaking when I got to hubby’s desk to tell him the story. I haven’t walked alone in Hartford since, not even to go a block away to the post office. I don’t know what it is about me that makes me look like a target but it really bothers me. It makes me afraid I’ll become one of the people murdered in their home by a total stranger. I don’t really go anywhere anymore, not alone. I used to do all kinds of stuff by myself in Tulsa, no one paid me any attention. It seems like everyone pays me attention here in CT. Maybe CT just sucks.

Other people with AS talk about the same problems though. I have problems with store employee’s watching me like I look suspicious and stuff too. I don’t know if it’s my mannerisms or what, but apparently I look suspicious. Kind of sucks cuz I’m harmless, I’m the kind of person that wouldn’t steal anything if someone paid me. At least I know I’m not alone though, other AS people have these same problems.

I envy people who can go through life without being noticed, I feel like I’m always noticed. I mean, it’s not alllllll the time, I’m not paranoid. I can go to store’s sometimes and no one will look at me funny, I can go out and no one will bother me, it’s just that it’s happened often enough that it’s really started to bother me and affect my ability to just go out and do things.

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