Adventure

Anxiety doesn’t believe in adventure. Adventure is not something that exists, because adventure requires not knowing what will happen next, doing something you’ve never done before… But with anxiety, that isn’t adventurous, it’s torture to be avoided at all costs.

Tomorrow I have to ride the light rail to downtown (public transportation). I have ridden the light rail a grand total of twice in my life, and both were with S, and S is all competent and knows where to stand and which platform and how to get tickets and when to get off. I just had to follow along.

Now, I have to do it alone. Tomorrow.

So I had a panic attack tonight and decided to simply not go to the $500 conference my district paid for me to go to. Avoidance at all costs!

So Sir just spent his evening literally driving me over to the light rail station so I could see where to pull in, how to park, where the ticket machines are, what all the options are, where to stand to get the train going there, where the return train will be. He took pictures of all the buildings and landmarks around my stop, from both directions, on my phone so I can watch out the windows and know when my stop is coming, even though he said he’s pretty sure they’ll announce each stop as well.

Then we came home and Google mapped and Street Viewed my entire route from the light rail station to the destination… Looked at all the buildings around the area, practiced me “walking” from the light rail to the destination, looked at the front of the building… got lost (accidentally wandered down an alley in Street View), had another panic attack because I was lost in downtown (on Google Map).

And now I have to go to bed and I’m going to just panic all night because… This is life with fucking anxiety. Stupid anxiety!

And… you know… nobody has any idea that I have to do things like this because I pretend like I’m all a competent and capable human being who doesn’t panic and have to physically practice the night before to take a fucking train downtown.

I will also be leaving two hours early because… you know… I might wander down an alley.

Also, Sir had to walk me through how to get Uber or Lyft (taxi service) in case I do get totally lost in the 400 feet from the station to the hotel…

I totally won’t call Uber or Lyft, because, that’s even more scary than being lost in an alley downtown.

Yeah.