Whatever You Do, Don't Look Down

I had an anxiety attack this morning.  It was a relatively small one, and it happens sometimes.  I suffer from an anxiety disorder.  I suppose I don't have an actual diagnosis, but I think my therapist liked to call it generalized anxiety disorder.  I stopped going to my therapist shortly after Duncan was born, and several people have suggested to me that that was not a wise course of action. However, I genuinely feel that she gave me the tools to keep it pretty well under control; sometimes the anxiety controls me, but those instances are pretty rare now. Today was one of those days.

Identifying anxiety triggers is pretty important in controlling them, and I spent a good part of today trying to identify what made me break out in a cold sweat during first period with my heart racing, my breathing shallow, and my attention shattered into a million pieces.  Eventually, I stopped thinking so hard about it, and the answer came to me.  Here's what happened.

I forgot not to look down.  

I suddenly realized this morning that I have been writing about my personal and work life on the internet and allowing people to read it.  THIS IS HUGE for me.  First of all, writing is like an art for me, and opening up my work to you, my dear readership of 8 or 9, is enormously stressful to me.  It's scary to share my writing, especially with people I see on an everyday basis.  In case you missed it (for example, you may have been residing under a rock), I am an introvert, extremely sensitive, and fearful of failure.  Whoa.  What was I THINKING?  Then, there's the little subject of the subject...somewhere along the line I stopped writing just about knitting and silly or annoying things Duncan does and started writing about myself. I don't do that kind of thing.  And then, I even started writing about my feelings. Good God.  I like to THINK that I'm good at feelings, but here's the truth.  I'm good at OTHER people's feelings.  I'm good at talking about what makes me angry, anxious, or sad, but that's it.  That's pretty much my public emotional repertoire. What have I done?????  See?  I forgot that you're not supposed to look down.  

For whatever reason, I'm over it now.  You've all given me positive affirmations, I'm still enjoying the writing, and you reading it gives me a purpose for writing. The more I write, the more I want to write.  That's kind of exciting to me so I'll get back on the horse.  I still like writing about silly things that happen in my family or what I think about when I'm not sleeping, but the worst thing that come of you reading that other stuff, the stuff about me, is that you'll know me a little bit better; how can that be a bad thing?  

P.S.  I'm trying to keep my dyslexic readership so what do we think of this template?  More readable?  I don't like the look of this font, but Verdana and Helvetica are the most readable fonts. More on that later.