Anxiety

Boat race weekend has always been a staple of sorts during the summer time months in the Tri-Cities. While generally geared toward the mid 20's to early 30's sort of folks, it meant an unusually fun-filled time for my cousins and I. As we hit that sweet spot in childhood where you are able to be left alone without too much fear of running with fire or scissoring the house down, my cousins and I were left for essentially a full day all to ourselves. The year was 2003, and we had access to a Playstation, a swimming pool, a plethora of Costco muffins, and no adult supervision for a period of 12 or so hours for a good 3 days in a row.

Needless to say, it was something to look forward to despite it being toward the end of the summer where my pre-returning to school anxiousness was soon to kick in.

As the years passed, Boat Race Weekend became less and less of a big event among my parent's circle of friends. Finally one year, in an attempt to avoid any possible attempts to get wrapped into the events of the once treasured 72 hours, they decided to literally skip town to Vegas every year.

Fast forward to 2014. The month is June, and I'm just a few days shy of a month after graduating from WSU. Now that the brief post-college bliss period had passed, the grinding toward acquiring a job became alarmingly intense as time went on. Sometime in early July, I decide I want a sort of side project to work on. Not like knitting or collecting shit, but something more useless like throwing together a mixed Boat Race party throwback, which would also combine with my 22nd birthday (damn how convenient that turned out to be, just another one of those coincidences I suppose).

I pitched the idea to my parents in a certain fashion to where I knew they would shut it down totally and completely. I dropped a few positive possibilities and sort of just say "alrighty then!" after they shot it down. The next night, as I'm walking up the stairs, I hear them talking, speculating about numbers about some sort of event that may transpire in the coming months. Approaching the two conversing adults, I don't bother to enter the conversation as the reaction would be similar to that of the day prior.

A few hours later, I mention, casually, that if we were to do that shindig I had proposed the day prior, that Kimo's sells kegs of beer starting at only $50. They simultaneously look away and say nothing for a few moments. Already, one day later, we're a step up from "absolutely not."

Not two days later, we've reached the point where we all generally have accepted the fact that this is going to happen. I will invite my circle of friends, my parents will invite theirs, and everyone will have a helluva time.

A week or so later, I am called upstairs on a Sunday afternoon to grab lunch at Kimo's with my parents. Not being the sort of guy to shamelessly turn down a nice greasy burger with a beer or two, I find myself at my future weekly hangout spot. To my surprise, good ol' Dad orders a beer sampler plate. We take turns tasting the beverages in front of us, not quite having discussed what exactly what we were accomplishing, though I had a rather significant hunch. Finally we come to an agreement that the Honey Red tasted alright, had a respectable alcohol content, and probably wouldn't be met with much displeasure from any beer drinker. We put down the $40 deposit on a keg that day and schedule the pickup.

And things went swimmingly. I mean this in quite a literal sense as I spent a fair chunk of the party splashing about our dearly departed pool. Libation wise, the night began with a handful of Jager shots between Gareth and I, falling into my own trap of making my own drinks all night, combined with a delicious home-made rice krispie treat that was only a rice krispie treat made with regular ingredients nothing else that could ever be added to a sugary delicacy. No folks, just a totally normal dessert food. Nothing else in it.

A few hours pass as the general vibe begins to dwindle due to it getting late and people departing in groups. It's getting late and my crew is still mostly in tact. We're all in the backyard, being louder than is appropriate. Even being a Saturday night, I know my neighbors are generally the early riser type. With my parents long since in bed themselves, moving things inside wasn't truly an option either.

Still comfortably in the pool, my gaze turns upward to the group of primarily young men, now facing me with the clear intention of delivering to me a message. A decision has been made that the majority of the remaining friends was moving their night down to the Uptown bars. They apologized for what they considered leaving a bit early, and hiding my relief, I probably dropped a line vaguely resembling "yea I don't know why you guys bothered to show up anyway." The goodbyes are pleasant as the small crowd departs, again wishing me a happy birthday. I smile as they leave because it is now down to just Mallory and I. We decide to fill a growler with the remaining beer from the keg, only to find that there was perhaps two beers remaining in the silver contraption. Drunkenly impressed with our math skills from weeks earlier, we settle down to watch an old episode of House of Cards as we pass the hell out on the living room futon.

The following morning something very interesting happened. I awoke in a daze to a phone call at what I considered to be 00shithundred hours after the night prior. Who the hell is calling me at this hour, on a Sunday morning?

It turns out is was my first "boss" that I would have following my completion of my four years at Wazzu. For some reason which is still widely unknown, the members of the Human Resources department at the local Columbia Basin College, were at work on this Sunday morning.

Adrenaline kicks in to temporarily fight the rapidly approaching hangover during the conversation. I was being offered a job as an "HR clerk," and I would start a week from Monday. I sit up and walk back to my room to sit down on the infamous zebra couch. I bask in the feeling- my first job out of college. The pay wasn't excellent, and starting out it was only 32 hours a week. Still, looking back to the challenging interview in front of three confident women, I felt excited to get to work with the rest of the HR department who seemed quite sharp.

Suddenly my phone stars ringing. Here I am, confident they made a mistake in calling me and that they were about to retract the offer, she instead informs me that instead of paying me X per hour, they are paying me X+$3. This leaves me rather excited to get to work.

Things start off rather well. It turns out I'm the only male in this 9 person department, working alongside 8 women. I'll tell you right now, my replacement was a lady.

As I sit down to meet with the head of the department, I find that she has a legal background while we discuss a very macroscopic view of CBC and the other districts of the establishment. We go over a few legal proceedings that don't take place often, but have occurred and will possibly occur again on the campus. On just a few occasions during this meet and greet, I walked the line between interrupting her sentences and politely finishing them for her. My intent was to demonstrate I have some legal knowledge leftover from Media Law class I had taken roughly 7 months ago.* She catches on and seems on the verge of being impressed.

*I still have nightmares about this class. Like, recurring nightmares that I've blown off class or an assignment all year and that I will fail. I kicked ass in that class though, got a flippin' 98% on the final.

My job was essentially a receptionist. As you approach CBC, the HR building is naturally the first one you'd park near and enter. This meant that several times a day, people would enter the building and ask for directions to the main building. I give directions, they go on their merry way, and I get back to my other work.

Only the thing was, there almost never was any other work. Keep in mind this is during the summer months where CBC's attendance is quite small compared with the rest of the year. Still, most of my days I spent organizing my desk area and reading through the CBC website front to back.

Please don't get the idea in your head that I simply sat at my desk and accomplished nothing because I didn't actively seek out projects. I actually achieved the point of where I was rather certain one of the higher ups was annoyed with the fact that I had the nerve to ask for ideas on what I could be doing to further the proceedings of the CBC HR department. It wasn't as if I walked directly up and said "what do I do?" I began with my immediate superior, who told me to ask person X, who told my to ask person Y, until I had worked up the chain.

And so I began to dread going to work each day. The idea of sitting in an uncomfortable chair for 7 hours a day with nothing to do but daydream was not conducive to a healthy state of mind. There were occasionally projects I was handed that took days to accomplish, and during those times I felt completely content. I can file and add paperwork and organize shit all damn day if you give me a fair hourly wage in exchange.

Time continues and I begin feeling sick occasionally before work. I originally attributed this to my diet which had steadily been declining in quality. Feeling rather stressed about the complete and total lack of stress with work, and this ever sort of pre work sickness becoming more frequent, things were going downhill. Not at what I would call a fast pace, but at one which moves faster than one would prefer. This was during the summertime months which I had come to dislike as it meant my within-a-few-miles relationship becomes long distance yet again. And this time, there was no clear end in sight, given that I wouldn't be returning to WSU this year like she was. One or two other truly negative things happen during this time, and I'm beginning to realize that this is going to start effecting me long term if I don't make a major change.

Finally one evening my Dad says he wants to speak with me. A job has opened up at a company where a long time family friend ranks pretty high. A few weeks later on a Friday when the HR department for some reason closes at noon, I looked up from a binder full of copies of my resume and letters of recommendation to discover a panel of interviewers, nearly ready to fire off a host of challenging inquiries.

I walk out of the building feeling as though I wanted this job, that it would be a huge step in the right direction to get off this weird path I'd been on regarding my mental health.

The first few weeks were without much trouble. As I learned the methods of properly packaging the extremely expensive devices the company builds, my duties increase from receiving shipments into the inventory system, to pulling parts to deliver as kits to the build floor, to packaging shipments to be picked up by UPS and Fedex at 3pm and 4pm respectively.

The shipping aspect of the job begins to become an almost daily nightmare. The lady in charge of training me has a style of communication which differed greatly from my own.

As I am learning a new procedure, I prefer to start at the beginning. From this point, I would like to proceed to step 2. And so on, and so forth. The way I was taught to ship materials began with step 12, rolled back to step 7, blows way away to step 16, then finally back to 1, and continues in this pattern which I consider to be completely random. There are some who I am certain would follow this method perfectly. I am not one of them.

The shipping shelf grows ever more crowded with mismatched and improper paperwork. I half run, half walk around the building something like 60 times a day gathering signatures and hounding people to give me their shit if they want it shipped today, like the customer is demanding. On certain days when an item absolutely has to go out but was not prepared by the time our Fedex driver had arrived, I spent the next 20 minutes in an anxiety/adrenaline fueled rush so that I could drive the package myself to the Fedex facility something like 10 minutes away to meet the 4:30 deadline.

I can handle stress. I can handle deadlines. What I can't handle is the stress mixed with ever changing, overly specific details which could change at any moment without any notification to me, with bits of outrightly being ignored while needing an extremely time-sensitive signature, mixed in with being tasked with packaging a $30,000 piece of extremely complicated and delicate equipment I've never seen in a completely secure package without any paperwork and with perhaps 15 minutes to round up the necessary items for this to get out the door today. I can handle stress. I did handle the stress for quite a while and even earned praise for my work. On the surface I was doing just fine, but I awoke every morning in an absolute mess of a mood hoping that I would be so sick with anxiety that I could justify calling in sick.

It's around this point that I know I should see a doctor about being medicated for anxiety. One of the funny things about anxiety is its ability to make you almost always convince yourself of the exact opposite of the truth, so long as it relieves the possibility of uncomfortable circumstances.

After a round of dry heaving one morning, I finally called my doctor and requested an appointment to discuss the issues I'd been having. It was mainly an unsurprising time, diagnosing me with mild anxiety and starting me on a light does of an SSRI. For a while this seems to help things enough. But as the end of the year approached and the load of working increasing greatly as we attempted to ship out as much merchandise as possible before the year ended, I knew I was nearing my limit.

A few mostly unpleasant months later I had appeared in the Queen Anne area of Seattle after an uneventful cruise in my Tiburon. Mallory and I had always agreed that when the time was right, we'd get a place in Seattle. She and I met at my sister's place while looking forward to exploring the city. I had toyed with the idea of moving to the area and becoming an Uber driver to pay whatever cheap rent I could find before I got my hands on a permanent gig. During this blissful weekend with my (ex-)girlfriend and (current) sister, we took several Uber rides.

The feeling of being with my girlfriend in the town we dreamed of living in combined with a few excellent nights out with my sister and her friends was enough to get me to the point where I intensely questioning the drivers about the process of becoming a driver and how long it takes, and wild ideas began to form.

Satisfied with the answers I received, I returned to my small house in Richland that Sunday, and typed up a letter of resignation which I delivered the next day.

This was one of my first bonehead moves. The idea of moving to Seattle and becoming and Uber driver temporarily wasn't a totally bad one. On the other hand, trying to work full time while making preparations to find a place to move to, sell my current car and acquire a newer more appropriate Uber approved vehicle, all in under two weeks, turned out to be a rather foolish one. Had I taken a few more weeks to scout out a few more places in the Seattle area, test drive more cars before deciding on one, and then handed in a two-week notice when I had most of the preparations already in place, things would have gone much smoother and the contents of this probably would've been avoided.

While living at the Bellevue house, aside from being surrounded by some wildly illicit substances, there was plenty of conventional consumption going on. I was consuming more PBR than most humans should, but at $11.49 for an 18 pack, I was basically losing money if I don't buy one here or there.

I join in on the imbibing a bit more frequently, knowing it can change the way my meds effect me. As events continue as they did in the recently linked former blog post, my anxiety became more intense. I began to take solace by drinking beer alone in my room, away from the litany of other things being consumed throughout the residence.

Finally I get another living situation lined up with an old friend from high school. Things again go back to being alright for a bit. My beer intake is still above average, and taking time at odd times.

Seattle is an odd place even deep into the early hours of the morning, and there is still money to be made well after last call while driving for Uber or Lyft. This results in "getting off work" at 5am, still wired from the pile of empty crushed cans of red bull surrounding my feet. Without much to do, you hang around until 6am rolls around, and booze sales are legal again. Seattle is nice in that way, I never once got a judgemental look for grabbing a six pack of tall boys at 6:15 in the morning on a Sunday.

Some of you are probably distraught by the idea of someone drinking at about the time you typically wake up to work. But keep in mind, most busy nights, I began working at 8pm. If you begin work at 8am, and start drinking beer at 6pm, no one bats an eye. Flip the am with the pm, and people just react oddly.

Still in the Uber game, fares begin to dwindle with an alarming consistency. The time has come to kick the conventional job search into high gear. As 2015 came to a close, I snapped back to reality as I exited my vehicle to interview at a startup over in Bellevue. The interview is different than any I've had. It's mostly things being explained to me- some alarm bells have gone off that this could be somewhat scam like. It's a job in phone sales. It turns out they sell a pretty great product, and pay a solid hourly wage combined with commission.

Having never sold anything reputable, I attempt the "fake it till you make it" strategy during the interview. While I was convinced I was faking the everloving hell out of it, I didn't really feel like I ever "made" it. This is mainly why I was so excitedly surprised that my phone rang the next day with a voice on the other end informing me that I had landed the job.

Here we go again I thought- another new job, another opportunity to really get on my feet and start saving money again. The first four weeks of the job were referred to as Sales School. It was largely reminiscent of a college course, except for the fact that it was 8 and a half hours long each day. Still, weeks one through three were extremely exciting.

The Sunday before the 4th week, I begin to feel a bit sick. Monday morning I inform my superior that I'm feeling rather under the weather. He promptly texts back and says something along the lines of "Stay home! We can catch you up tomorrow and we want you well rested and no one else to catch on to whatever you may have." Relief floods through me temporarily as I rise out of bed to get more water. The whole "standing up" thing turned out to be the first of many mistakes I would make over the next few days.

My head immediately began spinning, and luckily the house I was in was small enough that the trip from my bed to the bathroom was something like 18 feet. I heave for a good 20 minutes until I'm finally exhausted enough to go back to sleep. This process repeats for the next 12 or so hours before I communicate with my work associates again and convey that this may be nastier than I thought.

Two days pass of not keeping anything down except occasionally some water. This means that while I was taking my anxiety medication, it was never having any effect- as it would soon reappear. Wednesday arrives and I can this flu bullshit is finally declining. At this point my head is beginning to feel- it's hard to describe, but simply not right. Now on Wednesday, the first time since Sunday, I eat some food and manage to keep it down for more than a few hours. I'm on the verge of seeing a doctor when the anxiety, loose from its medicated cage, decides to make a rather grandiose entrance.

Barely recovered from the flu, withdrawal from my daily medication starts to take its toll. The one meal I was able to keep down ends up being the only one until Friday morning. I couldn't keep Wednesday's pill even after having eaten a few hours previous. At this point I'm starting to feel extremely off, and I'm still sick- but not with the flu. Finally on Thursday I muscle through the process of taking my pill, and immediately take some Advil PM so I sleep through and of the panic attack inducing thoughts that have been creeping up over the past two days. I awake Friday and declare I will be at work today. As I walk out to my car, I place my bag of supplies for the day in the rear passenger seat of my sedan. I close the door, and it doesn't latch. I fumble with it for a few minutes before fear truly begins to set in (you can actually see a video of this on my Instagram). Do I really now, after having missed 4 days of training, have to text my boss and inform him I will be late because of a car door? Would he even believe me?

Just to put a cherry on top of the situation, I'm about flat fucking broke at the time. I can't drive my car down I5 and across the 520 with door flapping open and shut. I don't think I have enough money in my account to pay to get from my house in North Seattle to South Bellevue via an Uber or Lyft. I call my father, the shame apparent in my voice, and asked him to transfer a small amount of money to my bank account so that I can afford to get to work.

After this nightmare of a week and a weekend where all I really remember is consuming copious amounts of water, I feel refreshed and ready for the upcoming week. We're now making calls to potential clients on a daily basis, and we're mainly pulling from a pool of people who had shot us down in the past, but has probably forgotten that we called them a year or two ago. Still, my training group and I are met with almost entirely negative responses- something extremely important to familiarize yourself with early on.

Finally, I make my first sale. A quarterly subscription to our service, not a big score, but a score nonetheless. It's shortly after the call ends that I realize that the feeling right there is good, but it took 4 weeks of cold calling asshole realtors and insurance agents to achieve this point. Reality sets in that this is as good as it is going to get for a long time. I honestly hadn't realized that knowing this took a toll on my call quality. On an otherwise uneventful day, I am called upon to discuss my performance with two of the higher up sales managers. They ask whether or not I am still completely absolutely one hundred percent still committed to doing this. I spoke too soon, without truly thinking, and was too honest. I said that I wasn't entirely certain. Their response was: "well, we need you to be."

And that's how I discovered I wasn't cut out for a sales job.

Luckily but somewhat unfortunately, the Monday immediately following my departure from the cool little business, my second full and respectable paycheck hit my bank. I could keep my expenses taken care of for the next month and half or so if I played my cards right. However, the combination of having a bank account which consisted of more than two digits, recently leaving a decently paying job, and growing tensions between Mallory and I, more money than was intelligent was spent on alcohol.

I wasn't drinking all the time. I wasn't drinking every day. I wasn't getting wasted every time I began drinking. But there were periods which involved what I can only describe as binges.

I had been politely inquiring with Mallory as to her status of moving over here was. I plead that as soon as she has a job, she can move in with me, despite my small house and room, I'm confident we can handle it for the few months remaining on the lease. She rejects the idea on the basis that there simply wouldn't be room for three people in our 600 square foot house.*

*I found out later that she was pretty much correct, as my room mate's girlfriend moved in with us toward the end of my time up in Seattle. It was cramped. 

Still, in my head, I had put this ridiculous amount of time and effort into getting over here and established as soon as possible.

She never asked me to.

In fact, she recommended I take things slow on the move over, which I already acknowledged would have been the smarter move.

At the same time, I know how delicate the subject of a job search is for someone knee deep in the process of filling out the same fucking forms over, and over, and over again. I ask her at one point how it's going, and she tells me she applied to a nice place and has a really good feeling about it. Something like three weeks later, I ask again, and she informs me she hasn't applied for any jobs in the area since that last one.

And now I'm feeling a bit hurt. In my eyes, she wasn't nearly as dedicated to getting to where we wanted to get to and starting our life together in a new part of the state. Looking back this wasn't entirely fair, she had always been the cautious type who was rarely impulsive. I should have taken this into consideration before my dramatic and quick departure from Richland over to Seattle.

The long distance aspect is becoming increasingly unbearable. When we do get to see each other once a month or so, too much of the time is spent arguing and later licking our wounds.

I wake up one day and realize it's been nearly two days since we'd talked. At this point we were rather stubborn, and whoever hadn't replied to the other's most recent text was at fault for staying out of touch. She hadn't responded for so long because I expressed sorrow that so much money had to be put into 1994 Ford Explorer, and that they are total money pits. I've said a lot of wrong or incorrect things throughout my life. That is was not one of them. I hadn't worded it as "you're stupid because of your car" but from what I gathered, that is how it was interpreted. For some stupid reason, this was the event which became the catalyst for our break.

The next day, I buy a bottle of rum. I know what's coming. Something like half of the bottle later we're texting intensely. Things like "I don't feel loved anymore" are flung about left and right unnecessarily inflicting lasting wounds to each other. Far too much of this type of activity later, I ask her to do what we both know needs to be done.

The next text comes in. She did.

I remember being in what felt like shock for a while, before waking up and noticing the mostly empty bottle which was now laying on its side.

And so here we have Sean- drunk, single, and unemployed. This was far and away the lowest point in my life.

I'm taking my medication whenever I can remember to. The booze cancels it out on some days, and on others I just forget to take it. I ran out a few times, and waited a few days to get a refill.

If I hadn't made it abundantly clear, I was treating myself like a can of garbage at the end of a particularly wild music festival that has been lit on fire but still getting more trash on it all the time.

Suddenly, an opportunity seems to fall in my lap out of nowhere. One too good to be true, one which I feel I don't deserve in any way. One which dries me out from the drinking. An internship which had potential to turn to full employment with an experienced and well established videographer who works with legal proceedings, ie mainly filming depositions.

My parents again lend me money, and I go buy my first suit, confident this will be the outfit that leads me to success with this simply insane stroke of luck I'd come across.

And wouldn't you know it, things start off pretty well. My anxiety is still in full swing, but I had cut back significantly on drinking to an impressive once or twice a week. I am dry heaving on a daily basis, before, during, and after work. Some days my throat burns because of the acidic content of my otherwise empty stomach. I push through this for a while.

Most of the time after work I go home, hang out with my cat, and watch Star Trek until I fall asleep. Aside from occasional chats with the roomie and hanging with my sister when she was available, it was basically just Splotch and I. As wonderful as she is, she does not serve as an adequate replacement for human interaction.

We reach the point where I am running depositions from the video perspective. I stand up and read out some paragraph to the room full of attorneys and the witness, establish that we are now on the record, and sit down to start recording the proceedings. It has been made clear to me that in the room, we as the videographers, are lowest ranking in terms of pausing and resuming the proceedings. I reach the point where I am sitting still, focusing all of my energy on not exposing whatever leftover contents of my half-assed attempt at eating breakfast was to the room at large. I drank a ton of water during the depositions at this time, both so I had an excuse to visit the bathroom during breaks, and to make sure something more that stomach fluids were making an appearance during my bathroom trips.

I still have my convinced that I can push through and handle this. Reality disagreed, as I began to experience intense panic attacks the morning before a deposition, and then the day before, up until an important day of work was 3 days out and I could hardly function.

My parents had been monitoring my progress and while I generally inflated the positive aspects of my situation and downplayed the plethora of negativity that was plaguing me. Something about them having known me for like 23 years at the time helped them see through what I was saying. When I explained that I was experiencing intense panic attacks days out from work, they helped me draft a letter of resignation to this incredible opportunity that fell into my lap.

It was at this time that they began to strongly suggest I move back home, and that they had reached the point where they would accept my cat into the household as well. This was extremely significant and served as a wake up call to how concerned they were. My father has (had) always despised cats. The fact that getting me home and healthy was important enough to warrant having a cat in the house was all that I needed to start the process.

I looked around my 12x10 room and realized that my time in Seattle was quickly approaching an end.

Splotch rubbed against me soothingly as a tear or few rolled down my face while I hit the send button with the letter of resignation attached.

Uber hadn't gone as expected for very long, sales didn't end up working out, and now this opportunity to have an office located on the 30th floor of the City Center building in downtown Seattle had been lost.

The anxiety, now at its peak, is now accompanied by a deep and extremely troubling depression.

I am still at an extremely low point in my life and we're in June of 2016. My car is loaded up and I look through the room I spent so much time in over the past 10 months, where I experienced some of the worst moments of my life, and said good fucking riddance.

Moving back in with the parents goes somewhat smoothly. I start seeing a few doctors about changing up my medication. I get shuffled around from uninterested doctors to nurse practitioners who seemed to have knowledge based solely off two paragraphs of a medical textbook when it came to mental health medication. I first switch to something called Fluoxetine I believe. A month later having done nothing but absolutely destroy anything resembling a regular sleep schedule, we switch over to Venlafaxine.

I thought I had been sick frequently in the past. I never knew how often I could find myself staring into a porcelain bowl, and I attribute this sharp rise entirely on the medication switch.

During all this I got shuffled around among a few therapists to find one that stuck. I actually really connected with the first lady I was seeing, but she had a limited time remaining at her practice before moving to somewhere nicer. It's at this time that that my diagnoses are gauged as both severe anxiety and severe depression, but with low suicide risk.

And so I get transferred to Dr. V, who on day 1 hands me a flyer on the circular cycle of depression. Somewhat annoyed that he handed me a chart which could have come from my high school psychology class, combined with the fact I had already informed him I have a minor in psychology (not a big deal I do understand, but haven taken classes directly dealing with mental illness I wasn't exactly new to anything he was throwing my way) I didn't have a happy face going.

"Oh this is kind of emotional for you huh? Seeing how this applies to you?" he asked, completely misinterpreting my negative reaction to this bullshit handout he just gave me. After forgetting my name twice during our second session, it became clear to me this guy didn't really give a shit. Much like the doctors I had seen about mental health medication, this guy seemed like he was reading out of some bullshit book written during years past by someone who had never dealt with anything of this nature personally.

As I exited my second session with Dr. V, the reception asked "would I like to set up my ne-" and I cut her off with a brisk "no thank you," avoiding eye contact and walking back to my car where I may or may not have screamed for a moment or two while beating the shit out of my steering wheel.

 I still feel guilty for interrupting the girl at the front counter, it doesn't matter if your therapist is a tool, don't take it out on the receptionist.

A month or two pass. I make some progress after my primary doctor finally takes the advice from my first therapist and switches me from an SSRI to a mood stabilizer. I am still sick regularly, but not daily. Then after far too long, a new referral comes along to see a highly rated counselor.

Things improve somewhat dramatically here. This was the beginning of the turning point back to positivity. She listens. She helps me look at things differently. She helps me improve.

Still, my medication isn't quite working how I'd prefer it to. It helps a lot in a lot of ways. What it doesn't do is quickly stop panic attacks. I had been prescribed .5mg of lorazepam to take as needed for anxiety, and I was getting about 20 every few months. Taking one has the potential to cancel out some real nasty anxiety induced panic, provided I manage to take it early enough. However, having such a limited supply added to the anxiety in itself- as I could feel panic creeping up, I would ask myself if I think this is worth taking one of these precious pills. What if I run out, and next time I really need it I don't have it? What if I don't take it and this turns out to be an extremely bad one?

A scene plays through my head where I'm out of these pills, and I'm trying to hold my fingers steady enough to dial the number of my doctor and ask for a refill- which she immediately says no to because I just got a refill two and a half months ago.

However, in another stroke of ridiculous luck that will certainly run out soon, a new member of the establishment where I see my counselor joins the staff and she happens to specialize in, you guessed it, mental health medication!

We go back and forth a bit on our first appointment. We discuss the meds I am taking and pauses rather dramatically as I explain the limited supply of immediate anxiolytics I had been allotted. She is noticeably displeased that the previous people in charge my medication had been so overly restrictive in their prescriptions.

The appointment ends and I leave with a prescription for something just a bit stronger to help through the extremely difficult times.

I've been able to work through panic attacks lately without any sort of assistance. Simply managing to get a grip on the situation and actually convince myself that I can get through this, that I won't be sick, that I won't be resigned to laying down for another hour before I have the energy to continue my day.

There still remain the few which get out of control. They are however fewer and further between as time goes on. I recently hit 1 full week without the contents of my stomach making an encore appearance, the longest I can recall in recent times.

We're now pretty much up to the modern day life of Sean now.

As I drove around the Tri-Cities tonight hoping for Uber fares, it became increasingly obvious that the night was going to be slow. Back in Seattle when every trip meant I was that much closer to being able to pay rent that month, and every trip of every day was important, a slow night would mean pulling off to the side of a road hoping, even praying, that it would be an unpopulated area and that I could vomit without disturbing anyone else. I'd want to grab some beer, go home, and ignore the problems as long as I could.

Things are different now. I've moved back to the point where I drink "socially." While this can mean drinking beers while I play video games online with voice chat going talking to friends, that still counts.

Not including the private rides I did tonight which did pay well, I raked in a cool $4.34 in Uber fares from the 1 ride had between 8pm and 1:30am.

 So here I am, 4 hours later, having turned to writing to soothe my nerves.

In a strange way it worked, despite the rough feelings that surfaced.

It is about 6am Saturday morning, and I'm going to sleep the hell in today. I'll wake up, hang out with my family for a bit, and then get back to driving for what will be a much more positive and lucrative night than the previous.

See that positive thinking shit up there? That's what I want you to take away from this. I know it was 98% unpleasant, far too intimate for strangers to read, and quite simply over the top in places. But, like the last major piece of writing I did, this helped.