Melatonin Nights

On Monday I had a small panic attack at work. My panic attacks are generally very internal. There are no visible signs that I am freaking the hell out but inside I am just a mess of nerves. I get anxious and nauseous and light-headed. I feel faint and suddenly overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion and then because I've had the attack I immediately feel ashamed afterwards because "what the hell".

I am anxious about a whole lot of things these days: some things I can control and some things I can't.

As you may know I bought a Car on Saturday! Woor Woot! I wish there was some long dramatic story I could tell you regarding the purchase. But honestly, I hung out with Heather on Friday and sort of spent the whole time complaining about public transportation. Last Thursday I left work early because I needed to run errands after work. I got out work at 4:30 and did not get home until 7:00pm. If I had a car my commute home would be 30 minutes at the max but because I have to take two buses to get home, my commute can sometimes be a disaster.

As I am complaining to Heather she bluntly tells me "the moment you say you are physically ready to buy a car. We'll find you a car"  Of course she reminded me of our last disastrous not car buying experience and wanted to make sure that if i said I was "ready" it meant I was absolutely able to put down money. I of course told her I was, even though I may have fudged about what I could and could not realistically afford.  My budget was a low 5k and including taxes I was only looking to spend about 5400 all in.

In the car world this is not a lot of money and I thought I would not be able to find a car at that price that wasn't a lemon. The next day she calls me at like 10am and says"so I'm not sure how serious you were yesterday but if you are, i think i may have found you a car". The car was well over my 5k budget but Heather was sure she could talk them down a few hundred bucks because she is really good at this car buying stuff. We get to the car dealership and of course I am smitten with it as soon as I see it. This love only continued to grow when I test drove it and felt like the boss ass bitch that I aspire to be. When we got back to the dealership to crunch numbers I realized that the mileage on the car was misquoted by 30K. When i bring this up to Heather she pounces on it and the salesman like a pit bull. He apologizes profusely for misleading us and then says he will knock off $1500 from the car because "we are not in the business of scamming people and obviously the mileage is well over what it shows on the website".

And that my friends is how I walked out with a 2009, Nissan Versa that was $1500 less than my original budget. Well, not really walked out. I am still waiting for them to fix up a free bumps and scraps on the car so  I could get the car as soon as tomorrow or as far as next week. In the meantime, I have had to get insurance, take a defensive driver class and buy things for my car that as a car owner I didn't know I needed. As I wait, I am also filled with anxiety about my impending independence but also having to drive on New York roads. I am a very inexperienced driver and the idea of driving on the highway makes me want to hurl but I can't take back roads my whole life and I can't chicken out now and continue taking the bus until I'm 90 years old.

My other anxiety front is this falling out with Kat. She's been super quiet since I went ghost on her a month ago but I keep having this sense that this relative calm and quietness could mean a storm is coming OR Kat is absolutely okay with us not being friends which is only bothersome because it means she thinks I am at fault. For the past month, I thought I've had the upper hand in ending this friendship. That I took this big step in reclaiming my independence and terminating a friendship that was unhealthy with a person who was unhealthy. This doesn't mean I am not in many ways grieving the loss of the friendship, when it was good it was fabulous and I don't think I'll ever have such an intense bond with another friend as I did with her. But her relatives okay-ness (which I can only assume at this point) makes me think that this was her plan all along. When I asked her about her birthday festivities she was the one who said he wasn't interested in celebrating with me. Maybe she was done and had decided she was done well before I reached out to her and instead of me cutting the cord Kat cut it. 

If that's the case, holy effing hell, am I to blame for our falling out? Am I such a difficult person to have in people's lives that rejection is imminent.  I am a person who needs her space. I can love immensely but when I feel smothered I have a tendency of retreating because I need "me" time. Does this come across as mean? I am not sure, but Kat often accused me of being mean because of my desire to spend time apart and if this is true what a horrible effing feeling that is. Selfishly, I'd much rather be a case of us growing apart because we expected different things from each other. I'd much rather take some of the blame then all of the blame (even though I have of course but her in a position where she is at fault). Whatever the case, I am feeling a little off this week and just out of place.

My life anxieties are of course compounded with the news and while I am not a person who likes to discuss money, religion or politics....what the holy hell is happening. Just a few weeks ago I was riding high from the DNC and feeling super patriotic and grateful as fuck to be alive to see a women accept the nomination as Presidential Candidate. And now, I am filled with dread and terror and just awfulness because we have a man running who is the fucking worst, just the fucking worst and her chances now seems slimmer than ever. I have had to stop myself from watching the news because last week after watching the Matt Lauer disaster, I physically got sick and ended up throwing up and then couldn't go to sleep. It was awful and since then I've been taking Melatonin to sleep better and the only food I can keep down this week is toasted bread.

I am worried. Very fucking worried because I have seen some atrocious, awful and hateful things during the campaign and I cannot imagine an American with that dipshit as my commander is chief but we are nearing the finish line and this motherfucker is still front and center and I am baffled and I am nervous and I am afraid.