Have you ever seen these works by Toby Allen…? He made a plethora of them for all manor of mental disorders and they are absolutely brilliant. The drawings and descriptions perfectly depict whatever disorder they’re describing. Some are deceptively cute, like this little guy, here. He’s the one currently plaguing me to the point where I’m actually making myself physically sick. The last time I got this bad, I ended up in the psych ward at the hospital and I’m not doing that again. It’s pointless, really. Your problems are still there…

The thing about the psych unit… It just sucks. I don’t know how it is everywhere, but the one I was in was awful. I was nearing 41 at the time, yet I was being treated like a toddler who was in prison. I couldn’t have a pen because it was dangerous… Yeah, because clearly I couldn’t take out someone’s jugular or an eye with one of those little golf pencils they had us use with much more ease than I would a piece of fucking plastic… No iPods, no stuffed animals even if they were brand new from the store because they had a case of bed bugs once. So I had no comfort whatsoever. And then there was Nurse Ratchet… Literally, the woman screamed at you for no reason. It was like being in the 7th circle of Hell. I think that’s where the creepy masks in this picture came from… In any case, I eventually flipped shit because of all that after I’d been there two days and hadn’t even seen a doctor. I was just given pills and was told to take them. Nice… And when I was finally released, I came home and found that all my problems, stresses, fears and anxieties were all here to throw me a welcome home party. It was such a great time… I actually didn’t feel better until after the two week outpatient program. But the point is, I can feel my anxiety spiraling out of control again and I don’t want to end up back in the whacky ward in that same scenario.

One day, while taking down Christmas decorations, I had to crawl under the tree and realized why the animals liked it under there. It looked really cool! And it was kind of cozy, actually, as if it were a nice place to hide. I thought that would be fun for a child to do and wondered if I’d ever done that as a child, but I couldn’t remember. That seemed to set me off and I spent about a half hour under the tree crying hysterically because I couldn’t remember something so simple. I remember everything! When I mentioned this to my mother yesterday, even she agreed I remember everything and she told me I used to play in a little empty spot behind the tree. But I don’t remember that…

That’s when you find yourself so troubled that you decide to make a vacation home in your game for the dick-nosed, rug selling Saharah. Since she’s a specialty character, I got to pick the theme and name it which is when it hit me… “Midnight At The Oasis” like the old 70s song because, you know “Send your camel to bed…” Get it…? You don’t get it….

And then you find yourself setting up some of your favorite Funko Pop! figures against your new blanket that looks eerily like the carpet in The Shining like they’re about to do battle… Probably because the transmission that is your mind is starting to slip a little from all the stress and anxiety lately… And I’ve always taken to heart one of Captain Kirk’s lines in a particular episode of Star Trek: “The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.” It’s true, actually… Try it the next time you feel stressed or anxious. Play a game, play with toys, go to Walmart and get yelled at for having a lightsaber battle with someone in the store (I did that once). It’s good therapy.

I think a great deal of this stress and anxiety started when Penny went into the hospital and it hit its peak when I attended her viewing. I wasn’t going to go because I was concerned it might make my anxiety worse, but I was talked into it. I should have listened to myself… Not seeing her still allowed me that ability, however so slight, to think that COVID wasn’t a killer. Now I’m more terrified than I was when she died to leave my house and I feel like hosing down everything in Lysol… or bleach… or kerosene and a match… I don’t know, whatever the fuck will kill this damned virus. Paranoia is setting in and it’s not fun, let me tell you, dear readers…

Penny’s viewing, however, seems to be only a portion of my issues, however. I also have Morticia constantly calling me to freak the fuck out and dump all her shit in my lap when she causes most of her problems herself. That seems to be a big part of the problem… Every time I talk to her, I literally either have an anxiety attack, burst into tears when I get off the phone with her because I feel overwhelmed or I end up getting physically sick because I just can’t handle any more bullshit than I’m already facing in my own life.

And there’s a loved one I’m concerned about… Said person is bipolar like myself and also suffers anxiety, albeit not as bad as my own. But this person refuses to take meds as they do tend to alter your thinking in negative ways (I myself have found myself less creative on my meds). So this person smokes pot. Hey, I’m all for it! I self medicated with it back in the day and this person is no longer a monster but the sweet person they once were. But now they’re moving onto ‘shrooms and having bad trips and I worry something bad will happen.

I know I can’t control other people and their actions, but I also can’t handle this amount of stress and anxiety. It’s not healthy for me.

Please send some good, healing vibes, dear readers… I seriously need them right now. Or if you have any tips on stress relief other than going off grid or going postal, I’d really love to hear them. At this point I’ve pretty much run out of ideas and things that have worked before aren’t working… I feel so lost and alone…