Situations people with high anxiety should avoid

I think my new apartment is trying to kill me. Or at a very minimum make me so crazy that I have no choice but to melt into a puddle of insanity where all I do is twirl my hair and chew my lip and try to not think thoughts like "stab that" or "scream real loud" or "more chocolate milk, please." Actually... that last one is ok. And by "chocolate milk" I really mean "wine."

Anxiety is not new to me. I am always anxious. Not crazy anxious, but in times of stress I do chew my lips, twirl my hair, and pick at any flaw on anything that sits on my body until it is a mess. Just ask all my fingernails. Or lack thereof. On a good day, any sort of blemish is fair game, but you throw in stress? Oy. You have a pile of nerves like frayed electric wire - one touch could mean a bad shock.

So yes, the chewing of the lips goes on until sometimes they are bloody. I got an ingrown hair on my belly and I have worried that thing into a scar (and I keep showing it to Regina and going "REGINA. MY BELLY BUTTON HAS A ZIT.") I mentioned before that my fingernails are mostly all gone, and the ones that are left are peeled and ragged. It's not a pretty sight.

My therapist told me to try meditating for just five minutes a day, which is just plain foolishness. My priest showed me a prayer that ended with "if I am to do nothing, let me do nothing gallantly." What the hizzy? Who are these kooks? But someone is obviously paying their salaries, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I tried it in the shower at the gym. I figured that was a mistake but it was the only place I could stand still quietly and be comfortable in the warm water. I also had the good idea that a song on the radio would be about five minutes and I could do a five minute meditation, starting and ending when the song started and ended. The first few times I did this, I did have a hard time pushing out thoughts like "Did I bring panties? SHUT UP BRAIN!" or "I hope there's no runners in my tights. BRAIN! SHH!!!" or "Oh God, what if the next song is Stairway to Heaven and I'm here in this shower for 20 minutes and am late to - BRAIN!!! STOP IT!!! WHY I OUGTTTA.....!!!" But it went fairly well, and so I continuted to try to do this throughout the week, and tried to meditate quietly and calmly in my shower at home just like the normal people do when they reach inner peace and enlightenment or whatever bullshit they call it these days.

But that's when things went wrong. Horribly, horribly, wrong.

The nice staff in our apartment tried and continue to try to make things real nice for me and Regina. They even took the time to re-epoxy all our floors, re-epoxy all our bathroom tiles and re-caulk our tub without our having to ask.

Unfortunately, the shower re-epoxy did not take. And it is peeling. So I stand in my shower. And I do not meditate. I do not wash my hair. I do not shave my legs. I peel the epoxy off the walls. I pull up the drips like candle wax, and strip off whole sheets of clear epoxy in the shape of the tile.

I've been told I really need to get them to re-re-epoxy, but the whole shower is almost stripped, and this would just start the whole process over again. So, yes; apartment you are an asshole out to get me JUST LIKE ALL THE REST OF THEM. Think that hotel in "The Shining" but more mischevious, and less murderous. Got it? There. That's me. That's where I live these days.