Evenings are always the worst. When daily responsibilities settle and my mind starts to wander. Fridays are hard in general. Most of my work is done from home which I prefer...it means less faking while around others which is typically exhausting...but it also means there's less structure. With less structure there are more life distractions and that is where I lose it. That is where I fall into "the spiral." 

Today was exceptional...but not in a good way. 

Let me back up... I am a business owner. For the most part, I work alone. I have one independent contractor but no employees. The work is there...but I need staff to keep the business going. At some point the workload grew and I was encouraged to see that as a blessing...but it was also a curse. Though I posted job opportunities and have been posting for almost a year now, I have yet to find quality help. I know that I'm picky...but it's my company...my name...I have to be. There's plenty of work to go around but now I am considering closing because I don't have help. How backwards is that? But if I am doing the work of three, it's impossible to keep it all up. Billing and collections is the first responsibility to slip through the cracks of time. It's an important component to maintaing a business...but I always put my clients first. I have to.

It's been incredibly stressful to say the least.

Today I spoke with a couple of people and vaguely let them know what was going on with work. They made suggestions for how to find candidates to fill the positions. Unfortunately, my anxiety and paranoia prevent me from doing those very things. I can't tell them that. So I don't. I freeze because it's never just a comment...it's a question, "Why don't you....?" I feel like I have to give some kind of answer. I feel like I've been frozen in silence for hours before I can formulate a response. I just accept it as a good idea and move along...try to change the subject. It's amazing to me that so many people have so many ideas and all are triggers. That I have so many different triggers that I am blocked on all sides.

I feel the walls caving in on me. Simultaneously, the room feels too small and the world too big. The walls are closing in but I feel this desperate urge to run to my room and under the covers, lights off to shrink down the world as small as possible. That is where I typically end up. In bed. I don't make it much past 6:30pm "out in the world"....and when I say world, I usually just mean the rest of my apartment. 

I can feel the pressure increasing in my chest as I sit here. My breathing gets more and more shallow as the seconds tick by. I know that it will not stop when I get in my bed...but at least there I can pretend nothing else exists. I am a timebomb that never explodes. Forever stuck at the the last second never knowing if it the next tick will be the last but prayiing it will be because only then will all of this pain end.