Melaton-ahhhh

Hi.  It's been a weird couple of weeks here, which culminated in weepy stress-ville about a job that I don't really even want and a trip to the doctor to help me sleep in my own bed because "bed" is better than "couch." 

And my baseball boys are now a salty 0-fer-the-start-of-the-season, which is basically 10 days of misery right here.  There's already some talk about "growing pains" and "first pick in the draft" and "just trying to keep it fun around here," but we're only 9 games into the season.  And as I'm writing this, I keep thinking about the shiny new bottle of anti-anxiety pills sitting on my counter right now.  FITTING.  And perhaps mildly necessary.

In what was another quasi-bizarre-trip-to-the-doctor (if ever I needed a Prozac, this was it), I was given the 2-minute "Are you really, really sad?" drill a few days ago.  At one point, there was even a clipboard with questions, and anyone who's been through a job interview knows that there is always more than one answer to the question.  So I'm staring at this thing thinking to myself "Do I want her to think that I'm depressed?  Or, do I need to just look stuff up on web.md?"  Because that was about the same thing happening there. 

Let me be clear, I think she was a nice enough doctor, but I wasn't expecting the harsh honesty of the questions, which amounted to the likes of "Are you depressed?" and "Do you want something for anxiety, depression or both?" 

I'm not someone who wants a menu from which to select my drugs when going to a doctor's office.  Someone else just order for me, already.  That's why we're here on this date, isn't it?

But, hoo-ray, the clipboard quiz revealed that I'm not depressed enough to warrant worried looks (and meds).  I did then get tripped up when asked "So what are you anxious about?" and all deer-in-the-headlights, I'm thinking "How much time do you have?" 

I think there's a disconnect between sitting nonchalantly and calmly in the neutral waiting room style chair and replying "Well, what am I not anxious about?  I'm pretty good at it.  Real gold star quality."

-I want someone to make my life decisions for me since they feel suffocatingly overwhelming.
-I can't reason how I'm supposed to take care of my kids but also take care of myself.
-I'm not sure what "taking care of myself" even means.
-I don't know how to plan for the future when it's seemingly impossible to predict.
-And most importantly, I need someone to help me get "Let It Go" out of my head when I'm trying to sleep. 

(Now, I'm a big fan of "Let It Go," and we YouTube it frequently.  But the mind needs a break, friends.  And it seems so ironically cruel when this is my torture-sphere - the witching hour between getting sleepy and getting sleeped.  But that Olaf, he's a riot and so deliciously punny in his little soft-shoe number.)

Perhaps the "How anxious are you?" should have been answered something like this: "Well, I'm pretty sure I've screwed up my whole adulthood, and I don't know how to get out of this mire, which makes me sound and feel pretty ungrateful (am I?), though I try to be patient and put things in perspective (do I?), but it seems like some day I'm going to look back on everything and think about what a bunch of nothing I accomplished (will I?), and I channel my inner-Elsa every night, so please, help me out?" 

I also casually mentioned that I don't really like sleeping in the same area as anyone else and, you know, I'm married, so that's been rough lately.  To which she asked me, "How long have you been married?" and I answered "11 years."  Then she blinked at me.  For seconds on end.  And asked, "This hasn't been a problem before?"

I know.  Anxiety-inducing.  I'm a bucket-full of contradictions.  You can imagine the boy's delight when he tries to talk to me logically.

But all was not lost.  I took the nice lady doctor up on her suggestion to give it the old melatonin try, and I'm not singing from the mountain tops yet, but it's been t-w-o nights of sleepin' without mental anguish.  So there's that.  Plus, I got the sweet, gummy kind of pills.  And that's good, too.

But now, I accidentally happened upon an explanation of melatonin from the take-it-as-you-will Wikipedia, which describes it as "a substance found in animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria."  I guess we all need a little help every now and again.