I've been battling the demons in my head again. Between the bouts of anxiety that have hit me so hard I couldn't make an appointment for a hair cut and the total lack of an real emotional connection to anything outside of my house, I've been a damned mess for more than a couple months. That's not even including the month before school started that saw me having anxiety-induced nightmares I felt like I never really woke up from!
But, I did finally see my doctor, because I was feeling really close to self-harm again just to feel anything. I didn't realize how low I'd gotten until I was holding a pair of scissors while looking at my thigh, my old and familiar place for cutting. But I saw the scars I have from past bouts of cutting and found myself going "Holy shit! You're fucked up!" and for me to tell myself I'm fucked up...well I'm pretty damned fucked up.
I was referred to Behavior Health, currently waiting for my referral to be reviewed. In the meantime, I'm trying to stifle the crazypants bitch residing in my head.
Which, kind of sort of, brings me to the conversation Mac and I had tonight. We're getting very close to starting the joys (trauma?) of house hunting, with intent on buying a house. We have a timeline in place and have started our dream list. We've discussed wants vs needs in a house and are even so far into this that we discuss adopting a dog after we get settled into our home.
Tonight found us randomly chatting about dogs. I think it started with talking about a friend's puppy, morphing into puppy versus grown dog, and wound up with me on the verge of tears thinking of a dog we don't have and have never even met!
Neither of us wants a puppy. Puppies are like babies, you have to potty train them and they whine for hours if they're not getting what they want. I don't want another baby and I don't want a puppy. On this, Mac and I agree.
I said something like "I'd like a dog about 2 years old. Unless there's a dog who is like 15 years old and still in the shelter. Then I'd adopt that one because I think it's sad to imagine a dog spending it's final months in a shelter never having a family and a home to be loved in." Mac replies "We are not adopting an old-ass dog just so it can die a few months later! Not unless we have a ranch." So there is a way this could happen, see? He totally left a loophole! I continue, trying to explain that the dog would have to really touch me in order for me to want to adopt such an old dog. Mac counters with "We are not going to be running a nursing home for old dogs to just come and lie around until they die! If we get a dog, it's got to do dog things, like walk outside and move off the sofa!". Of course, that wasn't at all what I meant. "I just think it'd be nice for an old senior dog to leave the shelter and have a family that loves him before he dies, so he knows love and what a family feels like, even if it's just for a short period of time."
Right about here, I start to feel tears forming, just thinking about a poor old dog in a shelter with no family of it's own.
Mac sees me wiping the tears and he says "Are you crying over a pretend dog?!", because that's exactly what was happening and he knew it, but I think he was still slightly amazed at the emotional attachment I had formed with this hypothetical senior dog. He then points out that, if I'm this upset over an imaginary dog I'm going to be much worse when/if the real dog came into our lives and died. I get why he'd think that, but I needed to explain "I'm tearing up thinking of that poor old dog alone in the shelter with no family to love it, not because I'm thinking of our old dog's death." Which made no real sense at all, except to me.
In the end, we stopped talking about dogs and Mac told me I needed to get back on my blog and post this conversation. I'm grateful he is so tolerant and understanding of my mental issues. Sure he laughs at me and tells me to relax or do something when I'm falling into an abyss of anxiety, but he does it with good intentions.
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