Generalized Anxiety through my eyes

Living with G.A.D (Generalized anxiety disorder) is something I have just grown accustomed to. I have found that I lose interest in things that I found interesting in the begging. Yes, that may sound like depression, which is something I also live with, but let me draw you a picture.

I am currently a school bus driver, when I first started I loved my job, I enjoyed interacting with the kids I drove, free childcare (I can take my kids to work with me if I needed to), my own “corner office”, and the holidays and breaks my daughter have off so do I. Sadly, the pure fact of it is I hate getting up at 5 am. I hate feeling guilty when I have to call in sick or need a personal day due to my mental illness. I hate that even though I work for a total of four hours a day that I still feel like I can't accomplish anything.

What I have never stopped enjoying is writing, drawing, and just living my life with my family. Yes, I get anxious and have my depressive episodes. I still have my family and close friends to bring me back. Working a part-time job as a school bus driver may seem easy for the average bear. When I am a mom to a nine-year-old and two- year-old, a wife, and a creative writing student, it is challenging to balance everything else. For the average person, they can do that. Me, however, I feel like I am being pulled in thousands of directions. Basically, I get bored!

I have a routine that I enjoy. I go to bed no later than 10:45, I wake up no later than 8. I get my kids up, I do the things I need to do, I than do the things I love to do. I love having a mild sensation of spontaneity but having just enough routine that I have balance. When I am working a job I don’t have passion for I don’t get that balance I love so much.

I just finished a conversation with my husband. We talked about how since we have moved up back to Illinois from Arizona, I just feel like I have been jumping from job to job just to make sure we are staying above water. I am envious of my husband, whom of which loves working with his hands, finding the career he has. Yes, my husband has days where he has to do a task at work that is tiresome and tedious, but he loves polishing dies. Me, however, I don’t have the same joy that I once had when starting this job.

As a writer and a creative thinker, I pull ideas from life to create or write stories. Half of the characters I create are a part of me or what I have experienced. It is actually one of the ways I cope with my mental illness.

My dad taught me at a young age that if I feel like the world is crumbling even though I know it is not to either; write it, draw it, or play it. Thus, now I have a passion for writing. I know that I can put my thoughts down in a journal or write it up on my laptop. I suck however at using commas and using proper punctuation. I have actually received reviews from my instructors that I misuse commas. This is why I use Grammarly and spell check, even that isn’t quite good enough.

Back to what I was saying, living with my mental illnesses makes me wonder what I could be doing with my life that isn’t what I am doing now. I will make a list of the things I enjoy doing,

• Playing video games

• Playing role-playing tabletop games

• Playing with my kids

• Swimming

• Writing

• Drawing

• Sleeping in until 8 am

Now if I could just find a job, no not a job, a career doing this I’d be fantastic. See, if I could make ends meet by writing about my life, I would. That is something that would help me to feel more comfortable with how I live. I have OCD due to my GAD, but I am not the most organized person. I get lazy due to my anxiety and depression that I either get too anxious about the mess and worry about something else or I get too sad that there is a mess that I feel like what is the point. The thing I have realized that causes this though, is that I am not doing what I enjoy doing. I don’t enjoy having to wake up super early in the morning, even if I know that I am helping someone who needs to be able to get to school. I love kids, I love helping people, but I don’t like having to wake up at a particular time or having to go to bed at a certain time to make sure I wake up on time. Wow, that was a tangent of just not wanting to wake up. As this experiment, which is what I am just going to call it, has progressed I have noticed that I don’t gain anything but a paycheck. I wish I could get paid for writing about what I know, what I see, and what experiences I have. Maybe someday I will who knows.

#generalizedanxietydisorder #outlook #writing