Real Estate

I had a thought tonight.  I was laying with Bubba snuggling him and I realized I was rocking myself with my foot pretty hard.  This is an anxiety coping mechanism - I rock myself when I'm stressed or if something is bothering me.  Apparently they've done studies showing that this is a common self soothing practice in children who were abandoned to orphanages and didn't get enough one on one affection from caregivers.  Interesting, no?

Anyway, I was rocking pretty hard by the time I realized it.  I knew what was bothering me - yet another random person on the internet got under my skin tonight.  WHY do I let these people bother me?  WHY?  Why do I let them inside my head?  I sighed to myself and thought, 

"I can't wait to get back on my meds so I can just not give a shit anymore."

I've been off my anti-anxiety meds for about a year now, ever since we started trying for this baby.  I was fine the first six months or so, but slowly, and more often now, people are bothering me.  Like, REALLY bothering me, and I hate it.  I really hate that I can let people under my skin and into my head.  The problem with having a disorder where you have obsessive thoughts is that you just can't let things go.  As my mom would have put it, I dwell on things.  They sit in my head and stew and simmer and fester and will bother me for days, if not weeks.  It sucks because there's nothing I can do to make it stop.

It's like telling a person to consciously try to NOT think of a blue eyed polar bear for the next sixty seconds. Go on, try it.  I bet you can't.

The worst part is that most of the people who are pissing me off don't even really freaking matter!  Seriously - there's the girl on Twitter who whines about blogger cliques and how rude it is when you tweet someone but they ignore you and don't tweet back if you're not in their clique.  Guess who has never once responded to any of the tweets or messages I've sent her?  Or the blogger who bills herself as "snarky."  I like snarky.  I'm a sarcastic person; ask anyone who knows me.  I have a good sense of humor.  But there's a fine line between "snarky" and "petulant, bitchy brat" and I don't think she knows where it is.  What about the dead horse beater who would post article after article about whatever thing he was fangirling from his skeptic websites, ESPECIALLY if it was something he knew people he was Facebook friends with had posted about recently?  I posted one night when my insomnia started up again a remark about missing my Ambien, and the next morning there were a couple of "innocent" and "coincidental" articles posted on his wall about how sleeping pills will kill you.  NO DUH.  That's why people take them to commit suicide!

I've deleted a lot of people from my Facebook and Twitter feeds lately.

Then there's the people I know, and I like, but they'll say one thing that will just blow my mind and I can't let it go.  One woman, who is so sweet and fun to be around normally made statements in a conversation that were so hateful and hypocritical to me, including why in her opinion Mormons were not Christians.  By the logic she used, I'm not one either.  It was so offensive that it just completely colored everything I previously thought about her.  I literally replayed our conversation in my head for MONTHS after it happened because I was just so shocked by what she said.

And that leads us to tonight.  A friend posted a link to an article of diabetes etiquette for people who don't have diabetes.  I read it, as I do many of the links my friends post, and felt that I disagreed with number five on the list:  Don't look so horrified when I give myself an injection.  I mentioned an incident when I had a guest in my home, and mid-conversation, with no warning whatsoever, he gave himself an injection while sitting on my couch.  I understand that these injections are necessary, but I was absolutely horrified.  That's exactly the word I thought at the time it happened, and that's the same word I'd use now, so that article was dead on about that at least!

In my world, needles and bodily fluids and things that could be classified as "biohazards" have no place on my living room sofa.  That's unsanitary and quite frankly a bit rude in my opinion.  I think most of society would agree, seeing as how we have special rules and laws for disposing of such articles.  However, I was hostess to this person (who I had never met before and have not seen since) so as good manners dictate, I said nothing.  I think Emily Post said it best:  "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use."

I told her that I would have rather he excused himself to another room to do that.  My friend pointed out that in some cases, like if you're out in public, it's not really fair or okay to make people have to do it in a bathroom or someplace that's less than sanitary, and I agree with that.  She said that her daughter does take measures to be discreet in those situations, by either doing it under the table or by turning her body so that no one can see.  I think that her daughter has good manners about it, because she's showing sensitivity toward others if she has to do it when she's not alone.

HOWEVER (and there's always a however, isn't there?) this other woman came on and said that expecting someone to leave or hide is insensitive, and that all he needed to do was give warning.  I disagree.  You don't get to be rude or insensitive to the feelings of others just because you gave warning and have a health condition IF YOU CAN HELP IT.  To clarify - if you are going into shock and you need something right this second, or if you're in a place where you can't get away to take care of it safely, then by all means, do what you gotta do right where you are.  But if you can get your butt up and out of the way of where you would be making others uncomfortable?  Do it!

Furthermore, there's a big difference between the private bathroom in a friend's home and a public one.  Heck, I freaked out on my husband a few weeks ago because I found out he took the boy into a McDonald's bathroom in his sock feet!  I guess that means my husband has been on the list of people who have annoyed me lately too.  Shocker, I know.

I don't know how much of me being this bothered by stuff is pregnancy hormones, and how much is not having my medication, and how much of it is me not having my medication magnified by pregnancy hormones.  UGH.  I'm just tired of caring about it at this point, but I don't know how to make myself stop.

The obvious thing is to tell myself to just not let them live in my head?  Why give up the real estate and let them live there rent free?  Let it go!  Get over it!  Unfortunately, OCD is a sticky turd and makes you hold onto everything.  Every detail gets played and rehashed and held onto with a firm grip.  That's the "obsessive" part I guess.  It is worst at night when I'm laying in bed with nothing to do but listen to my own thoughts.  I was up until 5:30 am over this!  It's SO STUPID!!!  I hate it!  Especially since it's usually people of no consequence to my real life that do this crap.

So yeah... It's going to be awesome in a year or so (dang) when I'm not pregnant or breastfeeding anymore and I can go back on my meds!  I could use a little brain numbing.