Hesitant, Hopeful

For the last month, every time I sit down to write, what comes out is a whole lot of ugly. I have several saved starts where I got halfway done and realized I could or wouldn't post what I'd been writing. I'm not in a good place right now, I'm not able to sleep, and even when I do sleep I wake up every hour. Overall, I'm having a rough time.

But, today, I had a small victory and thought I'd try to write about that instead of the ugliness. A milestone, of sorts. I actually managed to go out to a movie alone today. While I know that sounds like a small and somewhat pathetic thing, for me, it's pretty huge.

As an agoraphobic who also suffers from generalized and social anxiety disorders, I struggle to leave my house alone. I struggle to go to Walmart or even to just go out to put gas in my car. I do okay when I'm not alone, when my husband is with me, but I suck at alone. To make things worse, I tend to catastrophize, imagining the absolute worst possible outcome in every situation. When I can't sleep, the whole situation becomes so much worse.

So going to a movie alone, that's a negative... until today. Today, I actually did it. I went to see Skyscraper alone. I spent a good portion of the time worrying about being in the theater alone. I spent some of the time obsessing about whatever worst outcome could possibly occur. I don't usually go to movies, even when I'm not alone because my anxiety won't allow me to forget the short string of theater shootings that happened in the last few years. But, once I got into the movie, I was able to relax a bit and really enjoy the experience.

By the time I walked out of the theater, I felt pretty good about the whole excursion. An excursion that had been prompted by a fit of emotional upset about being home alone, miserable, while my husband's in another state spending his day off having a good time with his co-workers. Shortly after coming home and having lunch, the emotional turmoil had mostly returned, but for that little bit of time, I felt pretty good about having actually accomplished this small thing.

Deep down, I still feel pretty good about it. Seeing that I'll be 40 years old in less than two weeks, it was long past time to get this thing done.