Crack Monkey

I want to be able to be honest here. I don't try to hide that I struggle with anxiety from the people in my "real life," but I tend not to get into too many of the ugly details either. As it turns out, casual conversation gets a little awkward when you happen to mention that you cried the whole way to work this morning because you couldn't find a clean pair of socks and the scrambled eggs were overcooked. Let's just say it's a real mood-killer. Sure, I have certain people in my life that are well-equipped to handle my particular vintage of emotions, but many have no idea how to deal with it. And I can't say that I blame them. Anxiety doesn't make any sense, but it is so dangerous because in the moment….it makes all the sense in the world.

It is dangerous irrationality masquerading as truth.

But here I can type freely. I know my family reads this, as do many of my friends and co-workers. For all I know, there are neighbors scrolling these pages or maybe even people I went to high school with who are now CONVINCED that I really am the weirdo they always suspected I was.

There are just some times when I have to ignore any impulse to save face and write what is real. And right now - I am tired. I am hurting. And I'm angry.

What really pisses me off about anxiety is how horribly irrational the whole thing is. Hearing a police siren will trigger a fear in me that will compel me to make sure the garage door is closed or that I remembered to empty the lint trap in the dryer. Evan and I will be talking about going out to dinner and I suddenly will be slammed with the fear that we shouldn't go because we might get into a car accident and we haven't even started a college savings account for the boys and suddenly I'm off on a tirade about how we are the most fiscally irresponsible parents in the history of EVER.

Speaking of fiscal irrationality, my favorite thing to do after I have a money-induced Tweak Sesh is to head to Target or TJ Maxx and shop.

So here I sit, hunkered down in my neighborhood coffee shop, sipping on an iced raspberry chai when I probably should be down the street at the gym. I haven't been working out as much as I want to lately so I'm feeling frumpy and frustrated with my body. But, it's too hot to wear pants and I haven't shaved my legs, so it's blogging and raspberry chai instead. Obviously.

When my anxiety is bad, my brain won't shut off. My counselor calls it "monkey minding." I like her analogy well enough, but I think the monkey in my brain must be jacked up on Ritalin or something. I suppose it could just be from all the coffee. It certainly would explain the irrational, erratic and downright jacked up craziness that my thoughts were up to the other night when I wasn't able to fall asleep until after 1 am because I was too worried about my kids getting picked on in high school and whether or not the turkey in the deli drawer was spoiled and doggonit I forgot to buy more notecards again!

Today my son asked me to fill up some water balloons for him and his buddies to play with and when I pulled the first one off the faucet and it exploded all over me, the Crack Monkey went wild. I was yelling, and ranting about how it's not even warm enough for water balloons and that the filtered water cost too much to be using so irresponsibly and then I remembered that the water and sewer bill was probably overdue because I forgot to pay it the last time I did bills so I had to start tearing the counter apart to find it.

If you've ever seen a chimp at the zoo going bonkers in its cage, you'll have a pretty good visual of the situation. Only, there was no throwing of feces, only snot-covered Kleenex that certain toddlers failed to throw in the garbage.

It's stupid and it sucks and I hate that I have to come to the blog and vent about this. There are bloggers I admire so much who never vent about anything because they're too busy making Pinterest-perfect images for their next DIY project or shooting photos of their newly decorated family room that looks like it belongs in the pages of a magazine. There are others who are incredible writers who vent like crazy, who rant and rave with conviction and purpose about the atrocities of ISIS, the grief of losing a child, the struggled of infertility, the injustice of racial inequality. They have real, legitimate, world-altering reasons to vent and they do it with such power.

Meanwhile, I type away about an imaginary crack monkey.

It's actually quite hilarious, the more you think about it! Is it inappropriate for me to make references to illegal drugs and their effects on hypothetical monkeys? I need to know these things because I should probably start preparing now if I'm going to have to deal with a volatile comments section.

Thank you for letting me blog randomly about monkeys sometimes. I'm feeling much better now. :) 

P.S. If I was at Hogwarts, my patronus would be a chimpanzee.

P.P.S. I understand that the photo above is NOT a chimpanzee. Thank you for grace.  

P.P.P.S. That IS about how hairy my legs were getting to be, which is why I'm sure you understand my decision to sip raspberry chai and type about monkeys rather than subject my fellow gym-goers to my Amazon woman legs.