I sat at my desk in my cubicle with my hands cupped over my nose and mouth.  Staring.  Not seeing anything.  Just trying to tell myself to take a breath and move my hands.  You are fine.  Move your hands. Count to three and then move your hands from your face and get back to work.  But I couldn’t ever count to three, and so I just kept sitting there that way.  And then finally I took a deep breath and moved.

I don’t freeze up like that often.  But sometimes it happens when I become anxious; generally caused by a perfectionist mentality where I feel I've made a mistake or I’m not smart enough or any such nonsense that I try to sift through on a regular basis.

It makes me feel weak to have an aspect of myself so vulnerable and needy.  It’s not something new; it has been a background demon my whole existence.  Every year I conquer more of it, or at least a different aspect of it, but I cannot completely rid myself of it.  Maybe someday, maybe not.  How I react to it has morphed throughout the years and currently I believe I’m in the best place I’ve been.  But becoming anxious…freezing up…sometimes it’s just too much for me.  Sometimes I really just don’t know what to do but give in.

I can change a lot about myself. I have changed a lot about myself.  But right now this is still a very real aspect that I deal with on a daily basis.  It may look like I’m complaining.  It may look like me whining.  But it’s really just that I don’t know what to do and I don’t know how to handle what my mind is telling me.  Because I don’t want to believe it, but I don’t know how not to.

Today I crashed my car.  I let this anxiety control me.  I let it turn a day that was beautiful, sunny, clear, into something hurried and ruined and terrible.  That was me.  That wasn’t the anxiety.  That was me that did that.  And I can be better than that.  I am better than that. 

I am responsible for my actions, my reactions, how I respond to situations around me.  I’m not broken. I’m not weak.  I may suffer from anxiety but that’s no excuse to let it own me and my happiness.  Someday, I will make it my bitch.  Until then I will keep trying, keep growing, and just be grateful for the sunshine when skies are grey.

I am not perfect, but I am authentic, and maybe T hat is better anyway.

I am a fire

always burning

burning, burning, burning

burning, beginning and...

the last sentence is just to show I gave up using Harvard commas

He begins to sing and everyone presses forward; I'm left leaning alone against the wall by trash bins filled with empty cans of overpriced beer.  I don't dare look at anyone's face.  It feels sacred and holy and no one makes a sound.  I have no right to see their tears, no right to attribute some meaning to them.  We stand silent and are moved all at once.  In some run down scene with no seats and no windows and no one breathes because it might shift what is building within that building; I rest for three songs.

When I get I upset, I get upset.
When I'm happy, I'm so happy.
When I lose, I am an epic failure.
When I win I'm on top of the world.
I am passionate and it is fucking painful to be that way sometimes.
I get tunnel vision.  There is no bigger picture.  It is only what is before me.  Sometimes that can be a good thing.  Sometimes not.
I'm sorry.  I'm sorry for being this way.  For lashing out at God and Life and losing heart and sometimes I really can be brave.  I really can hold my shit together, sometimes.  But sometimes isn't quite often enough and often enough I tend to give in to my emotional knee jerk responses.
Life is hard, but not too hard.  And if I can hope and love and bring some joy to someone else's life then it can also be so worth it.

I feel like I need to write this out, so it's no longer in me. Right now I am worrying myself sick about work. Sometimes I jump the gun; get ahead of myself. I worry I make poor decisions. I worry I do poor work. I worry I'm not smart enough. Everyone seems to be naturally inclined to the knowledge they possess, and I constantly have to review things I feel like I should know. I worry I come across wrong. I worry I hit "send" before I should; that I badger too often and can't leave well enough alone. I just want to be good at what I do, and I believe I am, most of the time. But it's the times I feel I fail that I can never seem to move beyond. And they weigh on me. And it makes me squirm. It makes my insides twist. It makes me feel like I felt when Joe Ben drowned in Sometimes a Great Notion. And I couldn't take it. How could someone write a death scene so devastatingly vivid? No, that isn't it. How could someone write something that described just the way I feel when anxiety is baiting me, when I am drowning? Those words on that page were the equivalent of every battle with myself. Fuck. No wonder it overwhelmed me to read.

I needed this. To write something out clearly. Simply. It doesn't solve everything, but I feel a little less like the world is caving in.

I'm trying to learn how to do this. How to breathe and let go and be strong rather than destructive. I think I can do this.

Perhaps some of us are born with our hearts already broken.

On Memorial Day I called my Dad. I asked him to tell me about my grandpa, James Earl Bass.
I remember vividly the sticks of spearmint gum he would give my sister and I when we came to visit. I remember the the magnets my grandma had that looked like chocolate candies, and just this year I realize that he must have known all along they were fake, but he always acted surprised when I would bring one to him like it was real and he bit into it. But that's all I knew. I was 16 when he died and that's all I knew and I am so very sorry for that. I watched them fold a flag in Arlington and give him a gun salute and now he has a stone that matches all the rest. And at the time his story was the same to me as theirs: silent.
You were a Technical Sergeant in the 3rd Infantry in WWII. Daddy told me you were shot at one point, and your feet froze on a few occasions. And then he choked up; he told me about a letter that came after you died from someone in your company. You were stationed in Africa and were trying to get your men out of somewhere when you came to an area of land mines. The writer said that you told your men, "Don't worry, I will get you through this. You just step where I step and I will get you home."
These stories aren't unique, and they aren't history either; they are still happening today. These men and women aren't fearless, but step on in spite of fear, because they must; and that is bravery.
I never told him thank you.
I never asked him a single question.
And that will always be such a regret.
So every chance I get, I want to say thank you now.
Thank you, Veterans.