Back to work. in Mental Health

After almost a month off due to crazy neck and head shit, I got to go back to work today. I made it 5 hours without much pain. Mostly back and neck spasms and a dull little headache. I think this is just how it’s going to be for me now. I’ll adjust. I’ve done it before. I’ll learn to exist through the pain.

My mental state has been pretty fucking good lately. I seem to have lost my bipolar disorder altogether. I mean, I don’t know if that is really possible, but I’ve experienced no depressive or manic episodes in a month. I also feel less ADHD, if that’s possible. I have caught myself several times clenching my jaw, however, and I’m working on that. It’s silly because there is no feeling of anxiety accompanying the clenching. It’s involuntary. I literally catch myself doing it and have to force myself to relax.

What I have been feeling is very emotional. Overwhelmed. A bit… fearful. Strangely fearful, really. Some random thoughts that I don’t like very much, and others that I love the idea of. I think I’m afraid of… being alone. Someday in the near future, all my children will be gone, grown up and moved out and getting on with their own lives. And there I’ll be, all alone except for some cats, maybe. No one to help me up if I fall, bring me medicine when I’m sick, food when I can’t cook it myself.

I enjoy my own company, don’t get me wrong. I value my time alone. Hell, I require time alone. I’d go mad if I didn’t have it. But I also have this sense of staring into the abyss. Sure, I value my alone time, but I would also value having some kind of idea where my life is going. Something to look forward to, some plan or… I don’t know.

I’m realizing just now that I feel adrift, directionless. I know what I want in a lot of ways, I have steps I know I need to take, steps I’m positively dying to take. But then there’s the thought of what steps come after those steps? What’s next for me? Will I… oh, I don’t know, some questions are just too hard to ask because there’s no way of knowing the answers until they’re staring you in the face.

My mind is adrift and I’m rambling. I probably need to make a list. Step 1, Step 2, blahblahblah. I keep getting hung up on steps that don’t even exist yet, or steps that will likely never exist.

Fucking rambling brain. Maybe I’m not less ADHD after all.