Anxiety, party of one.

I have a couple of topics swirling around in my head, and have been there all day, so I thought I’d take the time to write them down.

 

Let’s chase this and see where it goes.

 

The first topic I want to talk about is Ikea. We’ve also got Chris LeDoux and potatoes to write about, so be patient with me here. I’m writing as fast as I can.

 

So, Ikea first.

 

The first thing that you need to know is that I’ve been sick for going on eight weeks. I do not have COVID or pneumonia or anything serious, really, and I’m thankful for that.

 

However, I do have bronchitis, which is painful and annoying and mostly just painful. When my Dad was here, he timed my coughs. According to him, I coughed every 20 seconds. When you cough that much, your sides hurt, and I got to the point where I would just hold my ribs when I coughed.

 

There’s a ton of physical pain involved.

 

Also, I tend to get bronchitis every 2-3 years like clockwork, and have since high school, so this is something I deal with a lot. (Please note that I don’t smoke and never have.)

 

For the past 7-8 weeks, I haven’t done a whole lot in my personal life, besides cough and not sleep a whole lot. Grocery shopping is pick up because I don’t have the energy to walk into a grocery store. I switched pharmacies to a drive-thru one because walking into a store is physically exhausting.

 

For the first several weeks of it, I could sleep 2-3 hours a night. The physical exhaustion part just comes from not sleeping and your body being in so much physical pain.

 

I’ve been feeling a little better recently. Sorry for that tangent. This blog post is/was not intended to talk about bronchitis.

 

I want to talk about Ikea.

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I’ve been feeling better recently. I can sleep five hours a night now, which feels like I’m staying at a luxury resort compared to the two hours I was sleeping per night a few weeks ago.

 

I woke up this morning pretty refreshed. I decided to do some errands in the morning, (including losing my dog...who ended up being in bed snoring), and then for the afternoon, I thought I’d venture off into the big city a couple of hours away.

 

I haven’t had a pedicure in eight weeks, and I really want some new lamps for my new place.

 

Kansas City and Ikea, here I come.

 

The pedicure was fine, and it was nothing to write home about. I tried out a new color, which I hate, but that can be redone after a while.

 

I noticed at the nail salon that I haven’t really been around people in public for a really long time. Eight weeks, to be exact.

 

And then I noticed that it’s kind of fun doing things in public. The group of girls around me were hilarious and it felt nice to be around people.

(They were talking about the differences between American television and British television. Their words: "America: Murder, death, sex, scandal! Darkness everywhere!" As opposed to British tv: "Oh, that's a nice looking puff pastry." It was hilarious.)

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After that, I decided to go to Ikea to get some lamps.

 

I made a mistake when I walked in. Instead of going directly into the store, I screwed up and went into the parking garage instead. That isn’t actually a big deal, as you just walk through a couple extra set of doors to fix your mistake.

 

But here’s the thing about me: I have anxiety. Not only do I have anxiety, but I also have a few personality traits that are kind of weird.

 

I hate parking garages. They give me anxiety. I hate parking in them, they’re dark and scary to me, and I don’t really feel safe in them.

 

Plus, when I drive out of them, the dumb machine never takes the stupid ticket and then people behind me get inpatient and upset and honk at me.

They stress me out and I avoid them if I can. (I also got lost in one in St. Louis and had to Google Maps my way out of it. And my hotel was attached to it.)

 

So at this point in my Kansas City trip, I have really cute toes, but I’m now in a place that I hate (parking garages) and I’m kind of freaking out a little bit.

 

All throughout college and after, up until last year, really, I thought I had asthma. I kept an inhaler in my purse at all times. There are times in my life where I feel like I can’t breathe.

 

I joke about it, because of all the things to suck at in life, breathing is sometimes at the top of my list.

 

Sometimes, it just feels like I can’t get enough air. My chest will hurt. It’s hard to explain, but it feels like someone or something heavy is sitting on my chest.

 

Through the past 12-24 months of my life, which were the worst months of my life, I learned that the feeling in that situation or those situations is not asthma.

 

That feeling is anxiety.

 

That feeling is panic.

 

That feeling is a panic attack.

 

I know, now, somewhat, how to control that feeling in my chest. Stop what I’m doing, find a quiet place away from people, and just focus on breathing. I visually imaging my chest filling with air, and I stay in that space and place for a couple minutes, maybe a few minutes, until the feeling passes.

 

And then I realized today that this isn’t the first time that I’ve felt this feeling in Ikea.

 

I had a panic attack in Ikea today.

 

I almost left the store. I could see my car from where I was standing, and for a minute, I was going to just walk back to my car, admit that I got defeated by the big city, and go back home.

 

But I’m not a quitter.

 

I walked my butt up the stairs, and I went into the store.

 

I was too overwhelmed to walk through the displays, even though I really wanted to because they’re really, really cute.

 

I know that instead of going right to the displays, I can instead to left, skip to the lamps, find what I’m looking for, and then get the hell out of that big city as fast as possible.

 

I did eventually find the lamps. I really wanted three of them, including a floor lamp and two desk lamps.

 

As I stood there looking at them, it occurred to me that while I was freaking out about a parking garage that I didn’t even park in, I completely overlooked the fact that I needed a shopping cart for my lamps.

 

And because I’m weird and I have anxiety, I can’t just go get one.

 

I’m now in the middle of Ikea, and I am realizing that sometimes, I make poor life decisions. Today was one of them.

 

Going back and getting a cart was not an option, but there were some shopping bags nearby, so I grabbed one of those, got a couple of lamps and a couple of other things, and then left.

 

Guys, I’m from a small town. We don’t have parking garages or stores with escalators or elevators or weird carts that you put bags in.

 

This trip was completely overwhelming to me.

 

I was so stressed out, I didn’t even go to Trader Joes to buy weird fruit afterward, which is one of my favorite things to do.

 

I haven’t put the lamps together yet, but I will soon. That’s a project I’ll tackle tomorrow. I have an art project in mind for one of them, so I went to a craft store afterward to get some stuff.

 

I’m not thrilled about another store at that point, but I managed, and survived, and then I went and got a frozen Coke, listened to music really loud for a couple of hours, and then drove back to my little piece of the world.

 

I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t venture to a big city when you’ve been a hermit for eight weeks.

 

Welcome to anxiety city.