anxiety filled week

It's been a rough past week and a very rough weekend. These past two days I have felt like I have had no control over anything. My anxiety is completely out of control, I can't stop it. It has made me seclude myself into my room where I can be by myself, so I can control everything going on around me. Being around people makes me more anxious. I've tried just breathing through it but there's only so much breathing techniques you can do to calm yourself down. I am worried about what tomorrow is going to bring. The weekend will be over and I have to return back to work. I am worried that I won't be able to handle it at all, that there will be too many people around me for me to handle. I just want to stay by myself.

A week ago I got really sick. I ended up going to the doctor on Tuesday morning and missed two days of work. As I sat in the waiting room, I saw a little boy playing with a toy with his dad. As I was sitting there his dad called out his name... Ian. No sooner than 2 minutes later, his mom walks out the door and tells her husband and son she has the flu. It made me flashback to Ian and those dark days following his death. I was scared.

As I was being checked out by my doctor, she put together all my symptoms and thought it would be best for me to get an influenza test. Not only did I deal with the stuff out in the waiting room, I now had to deal with the fact that I had to get tested for influenza. After getting tested, I just sat there, worried. I was so scared it would come back positive. I didn't want to go through more pain. Luckily, it came back negative. I know I didn't test positive for influenza because I got my flu shot. But, there was still doubt in my mind. How can you not be worried?

The summer after I graduated high school, a teen was killed in a drive by shooting. When I was in 8th grade (he was in 7th) we rode the same bus. We always got mad at him because he would sit in the back of the bus, and of course that was for '8th graders' only. He was a really nice and funny kid. It was the typical 8th graders picking on the 7th graders type of relationship with someone we saw twice a day. This past week, the person who drove the car with the man who killed Spencer was sentenced to 25 years in jail. The man who actually shot Spencer got 2 life sentences. It's not that I am upset about their sentences, its that I was connected to Spencer in middle school and I hate seeing something like this happen in the area I live in. Spencer wasn't even the intended target. I knew the kid who was the intended target. I knew all the kids involved in the drive by. http://fox4kc.com/2012/02/16/man-sentenced-in-drive-by-murder-of-northland-teen/

I think that I deny myself so much on what happens around me. Like I shouldn't care about this that happens, or that. And that I shouldn't care. I guess it really wasn't until this weekend when I realized that it did bother me. And that's okay. You don't have to be friends with someone their whole life to be effected by their death. To me, I only knew Spencer for a year, but I still knew him.

I guess that's why my anxiety has been so high this past week... I've been surrounded by so many events that just retrigger my PTSD. I wish this was easy to deal with.. but it's not. All I can do is sit here and count down the hours and minutes until therapy.....