It's My Birthday and I'll be Anxious if I Want To

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash


It’s my birthday week! My birthday is the one time in the whole year I don’t mind being the center of attention.

Naturally, it’s also when I have the most anxiety.

I want to have a party with all of my friends. My home isn’t big enough for that, so I want to go out. The best time to get all of my friends together is a Friday or Saturday night. Most places where we would go out either don’t reserve space on Friday and Saturday nights, or they charge a hefty sum to do so.

So, first I’ll be anxious about arriving early enough to secure space for everyone. Then I’ll be anxious about everyone showing up. Wouldn’t want to offend the staff by taking up more space than I need! Then I’ll be anxious about more people showing up than I planned for, and not having enough space for everyone. Then I’ll be anxious about making sure to talk to all of my guests, not wanting anyone to feel left out.

Why do I want to go out again? Oh, that’s right – all year ‘round, I try to make things not about me. I give others the bigger slice of pizza. I serve my kids first, typically eating my meals slightly cold. I ask others where they would rather eat. I put everyone else ahead of myself, because others’ happiness is more important to me than my own. But one day a year, I think it’s acceptable to put myself first. All of the anxieties I have on that day are clearly proof that I’m still putting their happiness ahead of my own… just at the restaurant that I choose.

It’s three days away from party day, and I’ve already been stressing about this for a week.

Anxiety is the birthday gift that gets re-gifted to me every year. Maybe I should hold a mental white elephant exchange. No take-backs, someone else can have this grand gift.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Avoid Your Feelings in Three Easy Steps!

Image
Greetings, from your super slacker neighborhood anxiety blogger. Yeah, I know I never post anymore. It seems as though over the last 6 months or so, I’ve resorted to thinking about life (and all my issues) as little as possible, as a way to not freak out over them.
It worked for a while. Things seemed to be going relatively well. Sure, my contact with the outside world was slowly diminishing – even texts to my partners were slowing considerably – but surely if I avoided my feelings by any means necessary, everything would be hunky dory, right? 
How To Avoid Your Feelings in Three Easy Steps: Mindlessly play games on your phoneWatch Netflix whenever you should be cleaningFocus on literally anything other than your actual life
Yeah, I’m not fooling anyone. In the past few weeks it’s really caught up with me.
It’s the two-year anniversary of my husband saying he wanted a divorce. It’s hard not to remember - it was the Tuesday after Father’s day. I know it was a Tuesday because I was in …
Read more

Throwing Eggs Does Not End a Panic Attack

Image
I’ve never enjoyed cooking. I have ADHD so I have a hard time following recipes – my eyes jump around on the page and I always end up skipping a step. Making it up as I go doesn’t work either – When I look at all the food in the pantry, I see ingredients, but my brain doesn’t put them all together in a way that would make a dish.
While cooking I get myself so worked up because I’m afraid of failing. I’m afraid of ruining someone’s meal, so I work myself into a panic attack. Of course I didn’t realize that’s what was happening until about a decade ago. Before that, I thought cooking just made me angry.
I’ll never forget the time my first husband threw eggs at me because I was cooking and upset. I was making breakfast and it wasn’t going my way, as usual. In retrospect, I was obviously having a panic attack, but all he saw was that I was in a bad mood. I handed him his plate of eggs and bacon and walked back to the kitchen. While walking across the room, he threw the plate at me. It …
Read more

I got what I want... why am I crying?

Image
The above picture is an excellent portrayal of how far I’ve gotten with packing. My youngest built a box fort while my eldest played on her phone. Meanwhile, I was going in and out of the house bringing empty boxes in and taking filled boxes to the car.

I’m in a weird place today. When my husband said he wanted a divorce over a year ago, I was crushed. For months I felt lost and hopeless. I lost the home I’d lived in for nearly ten years, mine and my childrens’ lives were turned upside down, and I felt like a complete failure.

Since then I have worked so hard to improve my situation. I got a new job, I moved several times before renting the trailer I’ve been in for a year (the first place I’ve ever had on my own), I got a new job, and have worked hard to improve my credit score.

I’m happy with where my life is right now.

I decided I could have lower monthly payments (and SO much more room) if I owned instead of rented, and have worked for months to make that a reality. It’s been hard…
Read more