Welcome to Crazytown, Population: Me

Anxiety is creeping back into my head (my stomach, my fingers, my teeth) and setting up shop lately. It's a demon I battle, or don't, all the time. A few years ago I started having what I think were panic attacks on a fairly regular basis, at that time usually triggered by concerns about my children. I would obsess, endlessly, about possible ailments, scour google for symptoms, and turn every cough or bump or stomache into something that had to be monitored every second. I knew enough to know that my behavior wasn't healthy, for myself or my children, and after a particularly harrowing day when I had to flee my desk and take shelter in a conference room, hyperventilating and callling my wife every five minutes to check my kids for symptoms of some horrible malady I happened to read about that morning on WebMD, I admitted I was powerless and made an appointment with my doctor and got myself a ticket on the Lexapro train.

I also tried to address what I felt were lifestlye issues contributing to my state-of-mind. Way too much work stress, unhealthy lifestyle, guilt about not spending enough time at home, a kind of early (hopefully) mid-life career crisis, lack of exercise, internalizing and taking responsibility for other people's unhappiness, the constant, crippling fear of my own mortality. I took real steps to try to get my mind right: huge career change, renewed focus on nutrition and exercise, an intellectual exploration into my own thought patterns, a commitment to tell the truth to myself and really listen to the world around me, a rigorous accounting of how I actually spent my time and what it actually gave me back. And all those things helped, a lot. I genuinely feel like I've made progress toward becoming a healthier and more useful force in the universe. And I think I'm easier to be around, I think I'm connecting with people and a deeper and more meaningful level, and I'm generally not freaking out about every minor hiccup.

Except that I kind of am, again, now. The shooting, stabbing pains in my stomach, toes, chest, teeth have started to come back when one of the kids gets the flu. The sleepless nights, the strange panic out of nowhere triggered by the most minor thing, even a version of a full-blown panic attack sitting on a bench at Legoland with my kids a week or so ago, staring at every face that passed me by and seeing only aliens, feeling like a prisoner trapped in my own self-pitying skin, fully and completed alienated from the "normal" moms and dads and cousins blissfully buying cotton candy or laughing with each other, fighting my own contempt for their happiness, convinced that I am unable to function in peaceful day-to-day way, constantly uncomfortable in my own skin, a gift of heredity or karma or chance that I'm sure I've now passed on to my own children. Desperate for RELEASE, which I invariably seek in food, or alcohol, thereby further sabotaging the hard work I've started to do to get myself back where I need to be, spiraling further down into the selfish hole of alienation, building more walls between myself and the world around me.

And all the while murmuring to myself: KEEP IT TOGETHER, KEEP IT TOGETHER, KEEP IT TOGETHER. Don't give in to this. Figure it out. You're stressed out about work. You're stressed out about your son starting kindergarten. You're stressed out at the distant prospect of maybe having to move some day. You're stressed out about money. You're worried that you're not present enough for your wife and children. These are all real things, but they are manageable. They are the stuff of living your life, and you WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE. You just don't want to do the hard work of getting your mind straight, part of you is just desperately seeking an excuse, you're letting your laziness disguise itself as craziness, you're just putting on a mask. KEEP. IT. TOGETHER.

And that's what I'm trying to do. Looking for all the world, most of the time, like regular old Tom, quick with a joke or a rant or whatever you need, mostly calm, mostly happy. Fake it til you make it. KEEP IT TOGETHER.

And how are you?