Happily Ever... nevermind

Well, I did it.

I think.

I packed all my bags, had the Great Detective help me haul them down to a not-so-tiny room with a bricked over fireplace and a library down the hall. I put up my posters and hung up my clothes and slowly learned how to eat and shower and function in this place, with all this stress around me.

I turned 21 in a tidal wave of anger, humiliation, and grief. An improvement - I turned twenty in maelstrom of fear and anxiety, a harbinger of the worst year of my life. Anger seemed a distinct improvement. But that's not the story, or even the point.

I wanted this post - my first after returning to college - to be triumphant. A celebration of everything I had worked so hard to become. A whole year of my life devoted to this thing, this anxiety disorder, and I wanted this post to be a frabjous triumph. Look! I've done it! Now my life can Continue As Planned.

Yep, I did it. 

...but you think I'd know better than to expect a Happily Ever After. Guess I read too many storybooks.

Panic at Carleton is rough; I'm scared that every flash will set me so far behind on schoolwork that I'll never catch up. Which makes me more anxious, which makes me panic again - bad cycle. I've averaged three good meals in the past four days, lost my long nails, gained a scar, and worried both my sainted mother and the heroic Detective out of their ever-living minds.

I've been able to kidnap the Great Detective (who is the aforementioned boy I was flirting with, and is now the Boyfriend Of Super Duper Awesome Amazing Yes, otherwise known as the Great Detective, Sunshine, or Ducky.)  Before that, my sainted mother hauled her over-worked self down to Northfield to sit on the couch and watch mostly nothing with me for a day. I tried ferociously to convince myself that this wasn't The End, and I could bounce back from this and not have to go to the hospital, fall behind on schoolwork, and drop out of school for Once And For All.

I didn't start believing myself until yesterday, and maybe a little bit today if I'm lucky.

So the point is, I did it, but I didn't do it, do you see? I fought the good fight, made it through, turned twenty-one, but everything's just gotten harder. Not only do I still have these panics and high anxiety, I have them at Carleton where they're even more of a problem!

This is, I think, what we call Supreme Unfairness. Also known as life.