This Soft Animal
I was sitting in her office and it was after the nurse left after taking my vitals and I felt my pulse throbbing bounding screaming against the BP cuff and I knew it was high, could feel it, the nurse on leaving just tells me to calm down in a way that seemed sympathetic coming from someone who seemed not often sympathetic. She saw on my file the reason for the visit. "Ain't life a bitch," the only other comment, and I kept telling myself just keep it together just keep it together because I hate to cry in the presence of people I don't trust. Someday I will be brave enough to just let the tears flow whenever they damn well need to. But it was not this day. And as soon as Georgia walked in they started and I'm blubbering through what I'm trying to say and Georgia there with her academic demeanor, so strange and peculiar but so reassuring in some very abstract way.
Mom told me in a text, it's an illness. you wouldn't try to 'just get through it' if you had cancer, you would go get help. And I knew that she was right. It just feels so absolutely ridiculous to say out loud to anyone "I actually have a pretty good life but I am plagued by this deep pit of hopelessness and fear and doubt and anxiety that follows me everywhere, through everything." But there you have it.
We had a good conversation [through the blubbering, why must I cry in such an ugly manner?] and she wrote me a prescription and I have decided that it's not weakness to seek help. And driving in my truck later against the bible black of late Ohio winter evening it struck me how absolutely ridiculous it is to care so much about what people think/may say about me. Woman! Why do you act as though you have to please everyone, do everything, take care of everything, be perfect all the time? You do not have to be good. The only person's opinion you have to worry about is yours! Stop hiding from your nature. It is a wonderful nature. Explore it more, stop playing dress-up, stop trying to impress everyone. The people who really love you will be easy to impress anyway. And what else really matters?
Mom told me in a text, it's an illness. you wouldn't try to 'just get through it' if you had cancer, you would go get help. And I knew that she was right. It just feels so absolutely ridiculous to say out loud to anyone "I actually have a pretty good life but I am plagued by this deep pit of hopelessness and fear and doubt and anxiety that follows me everywhere, through everything." But there you have it.
We had a good conversation [through the blubbering, why must I cry in such an ugly manner?] and she wrote me a prescription and I have decided that it's not weakness to seek help. And driving in my truck later against the bible black of late Ohio winter evening it struck me how absolutely ridiculous it is to care so much about what people think/may say about me. Woman! Why do you act as though you have to please everyone, do everything, take care of everything, be perfect all the time? You do not have to be good. The only person's opinion you have to worry about is yours! Stop hiding from your nature. It is a wonderful nature. Explore it more, stop playing dress-up, stop trying to impress everyone. The people who really love you will be easy to impress anyway. And what else really matters?
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