I didn’t think anxiety would be like this

I look up anxiety medication. They have warnings about addictions. I read about the side effects. My phone is going off from Pan’s texts and I ignore them.

Maybe getting addicted to anxiety medication isn’t so bad. The allergy medication helps me sleep at night, now, except I can’t concentrate during the day, that’s all.

I also look up sensory integration disorder. It was sent to me. It turns out that some people are extra sensitive to sounds and sensations. maybe that’s why some of my clothes feel extra scratchy right after that whole skin allergy ordeal.

I start making a list of scratchy clothes to throw out and I hope it’s not another excuse to buy clothes. I wonder what it’s like to not worry. Wait, I know what it’s like to not worry. I’m not worrying when I’m surfing, skiing, hiking. Right now Pan is contributing to my list of worries.

The therapist office should’ve called me back today. They said two business days. I need help but I don’t think I need to use the urgent nurse line or whatever you call it.

Pan says, “Are you going to give your clothes to goodwill?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t want to talk to him.

I pull out clothes from my closet and dump them on the ground. These are clothes that I never wear because they’re uncomfortable but I think I would wear because they look nice or just because I don’t want to create waste. I keep the clothes I’ve cut or sewn. Some of these shirts look like I let a four year old play with scissors and thread. There are a few shirts I’m proud of, where people have stopped me on the streets asking where I got my shirt and all I had to do was cut the shirt for 15 mins. Then I feel like I’ve done something right.

There is a dress that I made in high school, cut and sewn from my dad’s shirt. It still has the name of the company he worked at, stitched on the left side of the chest. I’d tried to rip it out but lost patience when my fingers got bloody. It’s laying on the ground and I haven’t decided what to do with it. It’s too tight and the seams are coming apart and the fabric is a bumpy golf shirt material. But it was my dad’s shirt and he’d told me I did a great job. He’d only ever told me I did a great job on a few things. One of them was piano. The other was this dress.

I leave the dress on the ground.

There’s already more space in the closet. I’m relieved that i have a reason to donate uncomfortable clothes. I didn’t want to be wasteful. Maybe Pan can put more clothes there. I already gave him a sixth of the closet shelf space and he’s only here once a month. Ok. Sometimes I steal his shirts to wear. He has a lot of rock tshirts and I like to think black jeans and oversized rock shirts are my style. So technically it is still my closet.

Sometimes when I wear Pan’s shirts, people also stop me on the street quoting Metallica lyrics and wrestling catchphrases and I feel like I am doing something right.

So maybe it would be nice for Pan to have more closet space here. I want him to move here.

Today, Pan had texted me: “I’m looking at the process and interview questions to become a developer in Seattle. They’re too hard. I can’t even come close. It’s too hard.”

I almost throw my phone on the table, but I’m at work. My fucking sanity depends on him coming over so that we can live in the same city. But I am too tired to argue, it’s too late to say why did you quit computer science. I have told him those things before. Now we are dealing with the aftermath.