I am so spoiled. I am writing this entry from bed! Joe got the laptop online in the bedroom. He asked me today, "I'll never see that computer again, will I?"

"Oh no, it's mine now," I told him. Hee.

This is a nice way to write a journal entry, I must admit. Except for Patches trying to lie on the keyboard and Joe adjusting the covers in his sleep. But hey, I really can't complain, right?

Anyway, I just decided to start writing tonight. Often, I have an idea of what I want to say specifically. It's rare for me to just start typing away with no notion of where I'm going, but here I am, doing exactly that. Kind of cool, really. It's how I used to write regularly and how I write in paper journals. Hmm, maybe it'll have to become more of a habit here as well.

Well, let's see, what is there to tell you? I guess I'll just say that tonight I'm feeling a little weird. My anxiety levels were sort of high today and that brought up all kinds of thoughts/emotions. I tend to criticize myself a lot when I feel anxious or ask myself in my head over and over, "Oh my god, what is WRONG with me?" But I know what's wrong with me: I have anxiety! And I hate that I beat myself up over it, but I also hate that I have it in the first place. Sometimes I feel like pushing it away, pretending I don't have it at all, that my adrenaline levels are just fine, thanks, and that I'm not petrified of all the brand new situations I keep throwing myself into, but that doesn't usually help. Unfortunately, wishing it away has never worked.

The only thing that has ever seemed to really help so far was a combination of therapy, meditation, and exercise. Well, since I moved, I'm no longer in therapy. I'm doing pretty well on exercise (though I didn't exercise at all today). And I'm meditating semi-regularly.

Tonight (because of my high-ish anxiety levels) I wondered if I'm okay not being in therapy. I think I am, and I'll just play it by ear for a while and see. It's weird being away from it now, though. I guess I got kind of used to it.

But, the high anxiety levels didn't come completely out of nowhere so that's good. I mean, there've been some kind of stressful things happening here and there. For one, I've been meeting new people off the internet, and for gods' sakes, that is always frightening. I joined some mailing lists and decided to meet various groups of people in person.

Meeting new people kind of reminds me of the times I've climbed really tall towers. I'm quite phobic of heights, but occasionally I'll have the guts to challenge myself to climb some insanely high tower, going up hundreds and hundreds of steps to the top. It's horrifying the entire time I'm doing it, and then once I'm at the top, I say, "Hey, I did it!" And I feel very accomplished.

Meeting complete strangers is the same kind of experience. As I head out to the designated destination, I turn up the music in the car and sing along to drown out the voice in my head asking, "What am I doing? Why am I going here? I don't know these people!! So why am I worried about impressing them? What if they hate me? What if I hate them? Eeeeeek!!"

Then I meet them, it's no big deal, I feel happy for having done it and driven somewhere I've never driven before, and all is well in my world. It takes a lot out of me, though!

So last night, I met five people, and one of them I really liked a lot. Hey, one out of five's not bad, right? She's an animal nut, like me. Enough said.

Tonight there was supposed to be a group of six people getting together from meetup.com. Well, not only was I the first one there, but I was one out of only TWO people who showed! The other lady was pretty cool to talk to, at least. We sat on the couches of the lovely coffee shop and chatted about England (where she is from), particularly London, where I just visited, and she is going next week. We also talked about living in various states (we've both lived in about five different states) in the U.S. It was a nice conversation and maybe I'll see her around another time, too. Hopefully others will join us!

Meeting strangers is not the only anxiety-inducing situation I've run into lately, though. Take tonight for example! I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things and one of the items I needed was in a glass case. As if the potentially embarassing products aren't difficult enough to purchase, this store had them locked away in a glass case so that I could see the items I needed, but could not pick them up and buy them discretely like a normal person. The torture! They could have made it easy for me, but no. I'd have to go ASK someone to open the case for me, and the only person available was a weirdly balding man, who seemed busy. Or maybe I just made him seem busy in my head because I wasn't going to ask HIM! I don't know why not, really -- it just seemed WEIRD, and this was definitely another situation where I kept asking myself, "What is WRONG with me? JUST ASK HIM!" But I could not, for the life of me, bring myself to do it. It was too hard. I couldn't do it! There were people in front of me in line, and people behind me, and I just couldn't stand the idea of saying, "Yeah I need to buy something in the glass case over there, but it's LOCKED," and have him respond, "Okay, what do you need, I'll grab it for you!" Then I'd have to tell him, and jesus, I don't even want to tell you! Not because it's weird or dirty or anything, but because it's so stupid. Feminine dryness products are not illegal or psychotic, so I don't know what in the hell the big deal was in the store, or what it is here on the internet either, but it made me crazy and I left the store without even buying what I needed! I just told myself I'd go to a different NORMAL store tomorrow where they don't lock those things up!

Christ. I exhaust myself. I can't be alone in this, though. Somewhere, there's some sixteen year old kid who did the same thing because he or she's sure as hell not going to ask that balding guy to unlock the condoms! I hold that store personally responsible for the support of their illegitimate child!

Do you see? Do you see what it's like to live in my head? I second guess myself a lot, I think, and sometimes it wears me out.

I want to kick ass, I really do. I want to be all confident and I want to not worry about stupid shit (such as swearing on the internet, which also freaks me out sometimes, because - gasp! - someone might be offended by it), but it can be hard to feel confident just being myself. And it's even harder in a new place with new people. When I read online journals of people whose confidence and coolness just oozes through the screen, I want to be like them. When I talk to friends who I know don't worry about what others think, I feel like I can be like that, too. But sometimes it's just me all alone up here in my head, or wandering around alone in a new city, feeling like a lunatic, because I feel like no one else could possibly worry this much.

I mean, so much lately, I've been just totally obsessed with what the world thinks of me. What are these new women thinking of me? Should I wear makeup or not? What will the people in line behind me think if I stop everything so that the cashier man can fetch me some K-Y? What will the internet people think if they read this? Will my husband think I'm revealing too many of my inner thoughts to total strangers in cyberspace? Are people worried about my sanity?

Really? Because sometimes? I am.