Oh, boy. I had a rough night. My anxiety is at full throttle. I don’t mind staying at home because it’s pretty normal for me anyway, however, I miss the option of going out IF I so choose. That’s not what’s causing my anxiety. My anxiety is coming from the deep, dark crevices of my feeble brain…and my brain wants to know “will this nightmare ever end?” It’s worrisome. It’s frightening. Not knowing what’s going to happen, how it will all play out is what’s causing my anxiety. My therapist once told me that I most likely had PTSD from some rather nasty personal experiences in my life and I’m sure this pandemic has added to it. Anxiety and I had an agreement; I will chill if anxiety would chill. We were doing well until last night.

I went to bed at 2am and I wasn’t even sleepy. It took about an hour to drift off. I slept for about 2 hours before waking up. As I lay there, trying to fight through my pain so I could go back to sleep, I became very aware of every sound known to man. That’s an exaggeration…I think. I heard the clock in the kitchen ticking…tick, tock, tick, tock. I heard one of the cats walk across the kitchen floor. I usually hear them when they run through the house but walking? I’m pretty sure it was Alice.

A few minutes later, I hear this horrible rumbling and I had to get up to see what it was. The water heater. I never hear the water heater! Then, coyotes in the distance. It sounded like they had pups. Then gnawing… Damn critters in the walls. Gnaw, gnaw. I pound my fist on the wall above my head. I’ve spooked them and now I hear the little footsteps running. A few minutes later, more gnawing. Good grief! The refrigerator is making some gawd-awful noises now!

Getting close to daybreak and I hear an owl at a fair distance so it wasn’t too loud. Now, a fucking woodpecker is in the tree outside of my bedroom. Knock, knock, knock. I hope he knocks himself cuckoo. Crunching. Crunching? What the hell is that? One of the cats is eating dry kibble. Drip, drip. Kitchen faucet dripping. Honey Bear is snoring at the foot of my bed. I hear a whistle and realize it’s my damn nose. My stomach growls and at first, I think it’s another critter. Nope. But now something is in the crawl space above my closet. I can hear it moving around. I hope it’s big enough to fucking kill me and eat me, I thought. I hear a cat scratching on the scratching post now. Ssshhh….I thought I heard a door open. I got up to check it out. I never figured out what it was. Maybe that critter in the crawlspace found his way in and is going to kill me now.

I turned on the a/c in my room just to drown out the noises. I should have used my earplugs. Earplugs are a wonderful invention! With my earplugs, the only sounds I hear are the sound of my heart beating and my own breaths. It’s very relaxing; I wish I’d have thought to use them. It’s 7:30am by this time. I wasn’t having any luck going back to sleep so I just got up.

After chores and lunch, I crashed in my lift chair and took a nice 2 hour nap. I slept hard. I wish I could sleep like that at night and in my bed. Ugh.