I am very, very sick and tired of dreading things I know I will enjoy.

Take tonight, for example. It’s Sunday, and I love Sunday nights. First we go to the Sav-on at Ironwood so I can do my weekly shopping, then it’s off to Denny’s to break bread with my friends and enjoy one another’s company and conversation.

And I love that. It’s the highlight of my week. And I know without the shadow of a doubt that I will enjoy it.

And yet there’s a big part of me that, right now, with a little under four hours till we leave, is dreading that fateful hour like t’s the hour of my execution.

And this happens every single fucking time.

Same with other, less fun but far less than terrible things, like my wound care appointments or going to see the doctor.

No matter what it is, as the time approaches, I will begin to feel panicky and trapped and want to run away and hide until its over. The dread will only intensify over time and so something I, again, know I will enjoy becomes a source of fear and pain.

And that’s the bullshit I have to overcome every single time I get my ass out the door.

And I’m fucking sick of it. It is so goddamned hard being me. I walk around with a head full of pain and fear all the goddamned time and it makes me feel so helpless and depressed because that’s how any animal reacts to pain it can’t escape and can’t get used to and that can come at any time.

It responds with despair.

And in nature, that’s fine. The pain is probably coming from being wounded, and so when despair makes the animal hide, lay down, and stop moving, it is doing what it can to make sure it can use all its resources to heal.

But in people, as always, shit gets complicated.

And why do I get this attack of fear and dread? The Trog.

That’s the side of myself that views doing anything outside my pint sized comfort zone to be like a giant hand is coming down from the sky to drag it, kicking and screaming, from its warm safe hole and force it into the cold hard overstimulating world.

And that is my base level programming. So no matter how much my higher mind may know better, that’s the emotional reaction I am going to have whether I like it or not.

For the record : not.

No wonder it is so hard for me to do anything to get out of this goddamned trap. I have to crawl through a field of broken glass and expired blood plasma just to meet my minimal social commitments.

Anything more than that – like, say, applying for freelance jobs on UpWork – is beyond my overtaxed and underwhelming capacities.

So I slowly rot to death instead.

But boy, do I get a lot of video games played!

My life is pathetic.

More after the break.

Going further under

Under the weather, that is.

Swmmin’ pools. Movie stars.

Anyhow, add +1 to my Worry stat because I feel like I am getting sicker. Like I started off at the level of that recurring infection like thing but it’s only gotten worse since then.

Bad Sign #1 is that my appetite is slowly vanishing. It’s been days since I felt any actual hunger beside the baseline feeling that my stomach aches in that certain way.

But emotionally speaking, my appetite has disappeared like a ghost at dawn.

Plus I feel like I have a low-grade fever, in that I feel kind of hot all the time. Not alarmingly hot or even seriously hot. But too darn hot, that’s for sure.

Bad Sign #3 is possibly (probably) related to #2 in that I have this accidentally transcendental kind of trippy feeling nibbling at the edges of my sense of reality. I feel kind of like I am floating in the air like it is the sea and I am a buoy.

As opposed to a guirl.

And it feels like the world is pulsing in and out with my heartbeat. Plus I have one of those headaches that makes me feel crazy.

Dunno if I can explain that. It’s the sort of headache I imagine a character having in an old radio drama right before their other personality emerges and reveals that they arem in fact, the killer.

So I migraine, kinda, but with way more subtext.

This all adds up to my being in a state of low-key paranoia right now. I feel like something bad is lurking in my head, waiting for its moment to pounce and plunge me into darkness and terror and pain.

Sure hope that’s just my depression talking and not something… more.

But I am monitoring my situation closely and if things get any worse, I will call my GP Doctor Chao and make an appointment.

Of course, if they get WAY worse, I will go to the ER. Again. Sigh.

A fella could get really sick of that place. Especially after multiple “turns out it was no big deal” type visits.

Thanks. I mean, that’s good news by any measure. technically.

But couldn’t you have told me that four hours ago?

Because an entirely irrational part of me feels ripped off. All that time spent waiting patiently like a good boy only to be told it was nothing?

What a waste of time!

Plus there is the embarrassing feeling of having wasted everyone else’s time for what turned out to be nothing.

I tell myself it was worth it to check out a potentially dangerous thing, regardless of outcome, and that helps, but my social anxiety / Avoidant Personality Syndrome still gives me hell about it.

I really wish hospitals had someone whose duties included telling people with my type of diagnosis that they are glad we came in and it was the right thing to do.

That would make things so much better.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.