Excitement turned into anxiety, then excitement again....

I saw two shooting stars last night, and I wished upon them....

Anyway, today was interesting. I was having dreams of being in Germany again, borderline lucid dreams... For the most part pretty nice, enjoyable dreams... I let my alarm clock keep going for about fifteen minutes as I kept enjoying the dreams, then I shut off the alarm and said OK I'll get up in a minute, then I was right back in the same dream... Boy, dreams, they can be so much fun sometimes, sometimes I just want to stay in the dreaming state, because when I achieve lucidity in my dreams, all the anxiety and depression go away, and I can just be me and enjoy it... Then I jerked awake, looked at the clock, and oh, crap, I was about to be late for my meeting with my therapist.

I was originally planning to discuss at more length my trust issues this session. But, I was in a kind of strange, somewhat elated mood from the nice dreams, and as I sat for a few moments in the lobby of the clinic, I decided we needed to talk about something that's a more immediate problem for me.

That problem is that I don't have any friends. Well, technically that's not true. What friends I do have I can only meet in cyberspace. Here, where I live, since this is still a new area to me, and I don't know anyone but the family members I have here and my doctors, I have no one to hang out with. My therapy sessions are really my only social outlet, with the occasional infrequent times when my cousin's friends will come over to hang out.

This is a major problem, because it leaves me with too much time alone. Time alone to think myself to death, at the mercy of the intrusive negative thoughts that lead to circular reasoning and self-fulfilling prophecies. In other words, MAJOR DEPRESSION. Over the last two months, my depression has been worse than my anxiety, I haven't had a level 10 panic attack in at least a month, but I still have a level nine at least once a week, and I usually hit level 8 once or twice a day... But the panic attacks I would describe more like depression attacks. Except there's no such thing, at least not defined in the psychology books. My panic attacks now still exhibit some of the typical symptoms, trembling, hiding, trouble speaking, things like that, but what is going on in my head is a little different... Instead of intense feelings of fear, it's intense feelings of remorse, regret, sadness, hopelessness, that kind of thing.

So we talked about ways I can get some friends and social contact. I've talked about this with my family before, but we weren't able to come up with anything that worked. I tried getting back into the sport of fencing, but there aren't any fencing clubs around here. We thought maybe I could take one of those adult education classes that are offered at nights through the local community college, but there aren't any classes that even vaguely interest me being offered. Money is a big issue, of course, since I have no income and my family is scraping by to pay my bills as it is, so that limits a lot of what I can do. I thought, maybe I could go to the library and just hang out and hope to meet someone there. (gosh that sounds really lame and desperate!). We thought of churches... But churches and I don't get along, they make me sick, sometimes literally. And I don't want any more people preaching to me that oh, you just need to believe in Jesus and he will take all your problems away... Ok, don't get me started on that topic!

But, in my therapy session, out of the blue came the though of getting back into playing bass guitar and joining a band. I stopped playing about eight or so years ago. I was pretty darn good, or at least that's what everyone has always told me. Ever since I sold my bass all those years ago to help pay for college, my friends have made it clear to me over and over again that they were pissed at me for giving up on playing my bass, they thought my skill on the bass was the greatest thing since sliced bread or something, at least that's the impression you get when you hear them talking about "the good old days".

So, OK, here's what sounded like a great idea! Playing bass would give me something to do each day by practicing, and as I got better it would improve my self esteem, it would allow me to express myself creatively, and could get me some friends and social contact if I can find a band to join, which shouldn't be too hard, I think anyways.

So, I got excited about that and my therapist did too, he thought it was a great idea. But, there's the money issue... I'd have to put a big chunk of change on my credit card to get me a bass and an amplifier... And my dad has to pay my credit card bills, which means more financial stress on him... But my therapist shot my dad an email telling him that he should try and see if he can help me get a bass.

So, I left the clinic and headed over to the guitar store, and spent a good hour playing on some different bass guitars and a couple amps, just window shopping, and found some that fit my personality, sounded good, and were what I considered to be reasonably priced.

So, I was excited! That's excellent, since I've been mostly in depression all the time.

Well, as I got home, that excitement turned into anxiety, and slowly progressed into a borderline panic attack. For a few reasons... The "What if?s" What if I don't find a band I can gel with? What if I don't find any bands at all? Then, I'd end up with a bass guitar sitting in the corner, making me feel guilty that I talked my family into spending money on me only to have failed. Then there was that "something" I've eluded to in some of my posts.... It's a part of me that doesn't want to get better, that doesn't want me to take care of myself... .That something presented itself as a gut feeling that taking up the bass again is a direction in life that I don't want to take. But, a few minutes later, I realized that my gut feelings, in hindsight, are almost always backwards, and if I want to do what's in my best interest I should usually do the opposite of my gut feeling.

One of the main reasons I gave up playing bass a long time ago, was that I was never able to get the beautiful melodies in my head through my fingers and out through my bass, and that always pissed me off. I could never write any songs, because I could never translate what I was feeling and hearing in my head through the bass. When I practiced alone, all I could do were finger exercises, I could never express myself. The only time I could express myself was when I was jamming with a band, and the band came up with a riff or melody, then I could come up with all kinds of expressive bass lines to throw behind it. But I could never do it alone. And all those years ago, after my band broke up, there were no bands left in my area that played the kind of music I wanted to play (heavy metal), so I decided, hey, I had my moments in the limelight, my band had a local following and cut an album ( I think we may have sold a hundred copies, but that might be an overstatement) and we played a few gigs, so I thought, well, heavy metal is gone, and it's time for me to move onto something else in my life.

Well, anyway, by that time my cousin came home, I was on the verge of a panic attack, and she said that her husband won tickets for the two of them to see the premier showing of Terminator 3, somehow the local theater and radio station got to show the movie two hours ahead of any other premier in the country, or so they said anyway. I was excited for them, but I was jealous too. Because I really wanted to see that movie, and I didn't want to stay home with my depression and panic attacks, I wanted to go out with them, but they only had two tickets, and since it's a special premier, it wasn't likely that I would be able to get in.

A little bit later my cousin told me to get ready, they were still giving away tickets, so we jumped in our cars and headed to the theater, where the radio station had set up a little tent to broadcast from. My cousin picked up their pair of tickets, and we waited to see how we could win another ticket for me.

It turns out an hour later they were going to have a little competition for the cheesiest impersonation of Arnold. Well, there wasn't exactly a huge crowd, and I was the only one there for the contest. So we made jokes with the DJ that I'd have to compete with my split-personality. But, eventually, one other person showed up to join the competition, so I had a fifty-fifty chance, maybe. But I absolutely suck at impersonations in a big way. The other guy went first, and he did an OK job. But, I really wanted the tickets, so I pulled out a wild card of sorts. I know German, Arnold is from Austria so his native language is German, so I did my impersonation of Arnold in German.

The DJ had the crowd decide which of us won the contest by applauding, and only one person applauded for the other guy (his wife), and everyone else applauded me! Wow, that was cool, I got on the air, speaking German, and I didn't choke! And I won! Anxiety be damned, I did it! So they handed me two tickets to see the movie. Well, I only needed one, so I handed the other ticket to the guy who lost the competition, but I don't think he saw the movie, I never saw him in the theater, he probably got unlucky and was unable to get a ticket for his wife and had to call it a loss. That's a bummer for him, but I thought it was nice of me to give him the ticket any way. And the movie was good, better than I expected.

Well, I know this post is getting long, so I'll cut it off here and leave the rest for other posts.
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