Thanks A Lot Anxiety!

I am pretty in touch with all of my anxiety triggers and therefore can avoid them. The crowd one is tricky because sometimes I can go to a live show and be right in the middle up front and I'm fine. Then there are days like today. There was a going away shindig for the Director of our Child Development Division. She is amazing and I consider her a mentor. So I showed up a few minutes early and the room was already pretty packed. I said hello to a few folks then left to try and come back in a half hour when the crowd had perhaps dwindled. When I came back in a half hour it was more packed and people were spilling out the doors. I stood outside and tried to listen to some of the people giving speeches about her. I started to get woozy. I wasn't even IN the damn crowd. I decided I'd go outside and get some fresh air, and come back in another half hour. Came back and stood there and made sure the Director could see me and I waved, but as I thought of walking in to give her a hug I went in to full panic mode and ran the other way. I couldn't do it. I felt like a failure. I hate when I get like that. But whatever, it happens.

Walking to work these past few weeks I noticed a brand new thing I had never freaked out about before, and you are totally fine to laugh at this one: I now have a weird fear I'm going to slip and fall on piles of wet leaves. I park my car in a free block quite a ways from work, and walk in every day. It's a nice walk and I get to look around and appreciate all the great things about my city. But a little over a week ago I was walking and I suddenly felt like I was going to slip and fall. The ground was covered in wet leaves. Now, I did slip a few times but I caught myself. But walking you would think I'd fallen and broken a hip in my past or something, because I found myself holding my breath and feeling like my head was in a vice grip. When the hell did I develop a fear of fucking wet leaves? Jeebus cripes!! Then every day after that I would walk gingerly, stepping between the leaves on the sidewalk, surely looking like a freak, because I was deathly afraid I'd suffer some wet leaf death that would be featured on a show on the SyFy channel. "1000 Ways To Die: Lady Dies On Wet Leaves." Shut up, that shit could happen.

So yeah, as much as I realize how ridiculous most of my anxiety stuff is, I have to laugh at myself about how truly ridiculous this new one is. I mean, being afraid of germs and fecal covered cell phones is bad enough. But being afraid of fall leaves? Dude.

So if you are driving down the streets of Sacramento, and you see a gal in a cute coat and scarf, walking like her legs are only 1 foot long, honk and wave hello. It's me, and I'm pretty sure I'm about to fall and kill myself.

Happy picture of the day: There could be an AIDS infected needle in there! Some things nature made beautiful just to trip you up so they could totally maim you. True story.

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