Dishwashers are Evil

So one thing that's really fun about anxiety is what happens when you hear about something unpleasant. Take, for example, the day when I learned that slitting one's wrists can end in death. Now, I'm not really sure what a normal person would do with this knowledge, other than acknowledge that people sometimes commit suicide using this method and avoid stabbing themselves in the wrist with a very sharp knife (I'm pretty sure they'd avoid letting other people do this to them, too, although most types of stabbing are generally the kind that you'd want to avoid due to stabbing being painful and potentially fatal and all), but it's doubtful that most people would think about this tidbit of knowledge in situations where this knowledge isn't immediately applicable (i.e., situations where nobody is trying to kill themselves or someone else via wrist slitting).

When you have massive anxiety, on the other hand, learning about one of the ways a person can die is like learning there's a mentally unbalanced serial killer living in your neighborhood. Sure, maybe the killer only goes after a certain kind of person and you don't fit the criteria, but that doesn't mean you won't be as careful as possible to avoid any sort of encounter with this person. After all, it's generally not fun to have a run-in with a serial killer. And even when that serial killer's been captured by the police and sent to jail, there's still that feeling of unease and paranoia that keeps you on your toes. That's the feeling that stays with me years after I've learned about one of the ways people can die.

It's hard not to think about all the ways you can die when you've got anxiety. I mean, it's like you've got all this energy in your system that can only be used for worrying, so you might as well use it on something, right? Personally, I prefer worrying about things that are easy to fix than something that's difficult to deal with. It's so much easier to worry that way. And to make yourself feel better by coming up with solutions to all those little problems that don't really matter and wouldn't be problems if you weren't so worried about everything to begin with. This is why I have a love-hate relationship with my dishwasher.

Ever since I graduated college, I've been living with my parents in an apartment above our gallery. It's been remodeled fairly recently, and while we still have an old refrigerator and oven/stove combo with only one reliable burner, we were able to replace our laundry machines and dishwasher, which for the longest time was only useful as a very large, out-of-the-way dish rack. Granted, having such a large space right next to the sink for dishes to dry is wonderfully convenient, but having a working machine that washes those dishes for you is even better. Thus, when we remodeled the place, we decided to keep the fridge and the oven/stove for the moment and replace the appliances that desperately needed replacing. Of course, the stove falls under that category too nowadays, but it didn't at the time and we can still use the oven and that one burner so we're keeping it for the moment. Anyway, I think I'm supposed to be writing about the dishwasher right now, so we'll go back to that.

Our new dishwasher is wonderful. It works and it's quiet and it's clean and shiny and it's quiet and it does its job well and it's friggin' quiet. My mother was so thrilled to have a quiet dishwasher that she would turn it on before company came over and tell them that the dishwasher was running so that she could hear them be all amazed because it was so quiet. Of course, I can hear it running from my room right now, but that's because the door's open and the rest of the house is quiet and I just heard my mom loading it so I'm really focused on the noise because I'm thinking about it and it's all your fault that I'm listening to my dishwasher because if I didn't want to tell you about it, I wouldn't be listening really carefully for the noise and I guess there's actually someone outside using a power drill or a saw or something that makes a loud "EEEEEEEEEEEEE" sound which is actually louder than the dishwasher even though whoever's doing it is outside. That's how quiet our dishwasher is.

So you can see why I have a love-hate relationship with our dishwasher. Or, at least you can see why I don't just flat-out hate it. And to be honest, there's not really a good reason for me to hate it. At least, nothing involving the dishwasher itself. The only real problem it has is that it's not bolted in or whatever so if you open the door and pull the racks out there's a good chance the dishwasher will lurch forward because of the weight on the door and be all leaning and the racks will slide even further out because the door's lying at an angle and it's kind of freaky to have a dishwasher rack slide out when it's full of dishes that would probably break if they were hit with enough force, which probably wouldn't happen just from the racks sliding out further than they're meant to, but it's always good to be careful when things like this happen. Still, it isn't really a huge concern as long as you remember to keep an eye on things and unload the top rack before pulling out the bottom rack.

The real reason I hate my dishwasher is because I'm the one who has to unload it. I know this doesn't really have much to do with the quality of my dishwasher, unless there's a dishwasher out there that automatically puts the dishes away for you when they're clean, but that'd be ridiculously expensive and probably not the most reliable system unless it was a robot doing it and it was made really well and could be programmed to recognize every single dish you own and put it where it belongs - unless it didn't get cleaned completely, in which case it would simply put the dish in a specially designated place for someone to clean it, or maybe even clean it for you, if it was waterproof and stuff. But since that doesn't exist around here (it could easily exist somewhere in Japan or Bill Gates's house or somewhere else where technology is awesome and there's a bunch of geniuses with nothing better to do than make robots that can unload dishwashers for you (I don't actually know if Bill Gates has a bunch of geniuses with nothing better to do living in his house, but if I were that rich and successful, I wouldn't see any reason not to have 'em)), and since I like to be a contributing member to my household, it has fallen upon me to unload the dishwasher whenever necessary.

Now, I don't really have a huge problem with unloading the dishwasher. It's a simple enough task - everything goes in a certain place, and I generally don't have to touch anything gross while doing it - so I mostly dislike it because it has to be done once or twice a day, and I just don't roll like that. Still, it's relatively painless, and it's only because of my anxiety that I occasionally feel horribly uncomfortable while doing it.

As I was saying earlier, I have a tendency to think about all the ways I could die when there's really not a reason to be thinking about it. The dishwasher manages to bring out this tendency a lot because of what it frequently contains when I go to unload it: sharp, pointy knives. Sharp, pointy knives are a good way to kill someone. Not that I'm recommending people to use sharp, pointy knives to kill someone because killing people is messy and bad and emotionally scarring and most of the time will get you into way more trouble than it's worth, but when it comes to all the different ways you can die, sharp pointy knives tend to be pretty high up on the list in terms of how easy it is to kill someone with them, whether on purpose or by accident. I think it has something to do with the fact that they cut things, and bodies are one of those things that shouldn't really be cut up because they tend to work a lot better when they're all in one piece.

Because I worry so much about all the ways I (or somebody else, for that matter) could die, and because knives are a pretty easy way to make death happen, I sometimes get a little edgy when I have to put the knives away. This is why there's one skill that every person with anxiety needs to learn in order to make their lives happier and easier. You see, if you learn how to ignore the thoughts that go through your head when your anxiety flares up, or at least push them into a corner of your mind where they can be out of the way while you complete whatever task it is that needs to be done, you can get a lot more finished on your own without having to ask someone else to do things for you while you hide in the other room and rock back and forth in the fetal position while you try not to think of all the horrible things that could happen to the person who's doing whatever it is you asked them to do. However, being able to ignore those thoughts doesn't mean you can get them out of your head completely. Thus, whenever I unload the dishwasher, even though it looks like I'm just casually doing a household chore without so much as a single problem, there is a furious race of thoughts going through my head. That race of thoughts usually looks something like this:

Okay, time to open the dishwasher door OH SHIT YOU PULLED THE BOTTOM RACK OUT FIRST NOW EVERYTHING'S GOING TO FALL OUT AND BREAK AND YOU'RE GOING TO DIE BECAUSE YOU FELL ON IT AND GOT STABBED WITH LOTS OF SILVERWARE AND BROKEN PLATES AND STUFF okay maybe not but the dishes could still break and then mom and dad won't be happy and you'll have to get new dishes PUT IT BACK PUT IT BACK PUT IT BACK

Okay, it's back in place, time to put cups away, aw crap they're wet on the bottom dry them off or they'll cover everything in mold and you'll have to drink moldy water ew ew ew ew

Oh crap you left the cupboard door open don't hit your head on it because you've done that before and it is painful oh it's not in a place where you could hit your head on it BE CAREFUL ANYWAY YOU MIGHT HAVE A WEIRD SPASM OR STAND UP WEIRD AND SOMEHOW HIT IT BY ACCIDENT ANYWAY.

Sweet, only have the silverware to put away now... Oh my God you have a knife in your hand be careful you might drop it and stab your foot with it and then it would bleed everywhere and you'd have to go to the hospital because your foot's got a giant hole in it oh phew the knife's put away now. Oh God you have another one in your hand careful careful careful don't stab your arm or something don't touch the sharp part it will make you bleed okay that one's away now.

OH GOD ANOTHER ONE DON'T LET IT NEAR YOUR WRIST THAT WOULD BE PAINFUL AND YOU WOULD BLEED AND YOU'LL HAVE TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL AND THEY MIGHT THINK YOU'RE SUICIDAL EVEN THOUGH IT WAS AN ACCIDENT AND YOU MIGHT END UP IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL WHERE THEY'LL DO HORRIBLE THINGS TO YOUR BRAIN BECAUSE IT'S NOT A GOOD ONE IT'S ONE OF THOSE BAD ONES THAT YOU SEE IN MOVIES AND oh good it's where it belongs now.

AUGH THERE'S ANOTHER ONE WHAT IF YOU GO MOMENTARILY CRAZY AND DECIDE TO STAB SOMEONE WITH IT THEN THEY'LL DIE AND THERE'LL BE BLOOD EVERYWHERE AND YOU'LL HAVE TO GO TO COURT AND THERE'LL BE A FUNERAL AND EVERYONE WILL BE SAD AND EVERYTHING WILL BE RUINED FOREVER WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU MURDER IS BAD DON'T DO IT okay there we go, it's away now.

OH JEEZ ONE MORE WHAT IF IT SLIPS OUT OF YOUR HAND AND FLIES INTO THE CEILING AND GETS STUCK FOR DAYS UNTIL IT FALLS OUT AND LANDS IN SOMEONE'S HEAD AND SPLITS THEIR HEAD OPEN AND THEY DIE? I DON'T CARE IF IT DEFIES THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AS WE KNOW THEM IT COULD STILL HAPPEN! PUT IT AWAY PUT IT AWAY PUT IT AWAY okay good there we go.

And yet, with all these thoughts rushing through my head, I am perfectly capable of unloading the dishwasher in a normal fashion without any outward signs of anxiety. In conclusion, I am the world's greatest actor.

Daily Story 65 - The Personalities of Numbers

From a very young age, I felt that numbers were more than just representations of an amount of something. I felt they were beings with distinct personalities. It has to do with that little math trick, if you add up the numbers of a large number and they equal 9, it's a multiple of nine, if it equals 3 or a multiple of 3, it's a multiple of 3, and if it happens to be either of these two and it's an even number, it's a multiple of 6. And so, if you add my brilliant imagination, you get the following:

Nine is the best of them all. It mixes all the good qualities of all the numbers. It is the hero.

Eighteen is even better because it is an even number.

Multiples of three are the best. Three is stern, six is... kind of playful, but nine is a perfect mixture of the two.

One up from a multiple of three is bad. One is pure evil, four is an annoying little smart-ass, and seven is arrogant but not as annoying about it as four.

Two, five, and eight are the uptight lot that also save the multiples of three from the one, four, and seven. Two is very stern and unforgiving of failure, five is stern and does not much care for playing around, and eight is kinder and saves nine from the terrible deeds of one.

These numbers lend their traits to every number above and below them. Zero is a nine, eighteen is a nine, twenty-seven is a nine, and so on. Twenty-eight is a one, thirty is a three, thirty-four is a seven... you get the idea. It all depends on how far up they are from a multiple of nine.

Since I figured this out I've always walked in groups of six, though now multiples of four are all right as well since most music that I like to walk to is in 4/4. Thanks to this I now know how many steps there are every place I spend a lot of time in.

Also, nine is the best superhero there is. If you're ever in a jam, call for nine.

Daily Story 32 - Happiness is a Difficult Choice

(Doing something a bit different today. This is in response to this video by Shay Carl, because while I understand completely where Shay's coming from, I feel like he needs to hear this, along with a lot of people in the world. So Shay, if you read this, I hope it helps you understand why so many people got pissed off at your last video. I'm not mad at you (well, maybe just a little :P), I just want you to see where we're coming from. Anyway, on with the show.)

Don't let it get you down. It's up to you to make your life as good as you can make it. You're the one who determines your own happiness. Don't let others influence your decisions.

I was in elementary school when I first started hearing this kind of advice. At that point in my life, I had no idea that I had an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a generalized anxiety disorder, and the adults in my life didn't know about it, either. In fact, I was only diagnosed with ADHD when I was in sixth or seventh grade, and I wasn't diagnosed with anxiety until my sophomore year in college, which is strange, because looking back on my life, it was painfully obvious to see the signs. I was quiet in class. I cried a lot. I didn't ever speak up for myself, even though there were some days that I just wanted to scream at my classmates until I lost my voice.

See, here's the gist of what happened in my childhood. I grew up in a small town and had about 23 other kids in my grade. A few of them were growing up in difficult family situations, and like a lot of kids do, they took their frustration and misery at their home life out on their classmates. For the most part, that meant me, the girl who preferred ska and Star Wars over anything the popular kids liked, the girl who still liked to bring stuffed animals into class, the girl who cried about everything instead of fighting back.

But here's the thing: I wasn't stupid. I was told from the beginning, when the bullying had only been occurring for a little while, that it wasn't my fault. I got the whole "it's them, not you" speech and I got the "if you ignore them, they'll leave you alone eventually" speech. And, of course, I thought that ignoring them would be easier than trying to stand up for myself, so that's what I did. I tried to ignore it, and after a while I got relatively good at it. The only problem was they still made me cry.

This is where things get complicated. I knew that the biggest of the bullies (we'll call him 'Taco' for now, though I'm pretty sure anyone who knew me growing up will know who he is right away) wasn't acting like a jerk just because he was an incurable douchebag (or, since I was incapable of saying cuss words until sometime in middle school, a big meanie-face). Hell, Taco had proved to me on several occasions that he could be really nice and considerate of my feelings. I can think of at least two times where he and I talked about how we were sad or frustrated with our lives, and there was one point in middle school where he invited me to be in his group for a class project, which meant a lot to me because I was terrible at asking to be in a group. And later on, when there was a death in his family, I honestly felt bad for him, even though most of the time I hated the way he treated me. So I knew that he was just acting like a jerk because he was struggling with his own life. I also knew that I was supposed to ignore it, not let it show that what he did bothered me, and not let his actions get to me, because he was just doing what most kids would do in his situation. So, what did I do? I stopped talking and tried to make myself learn not to cry so damn much. Because seriously, I cried about damn near everything. I never changed who I was, I never stopped liking the Aquabats or playing elaborate games with my stuffed animals, but I knew I would get teased about it if I mentioned it so I stopped talking. I stopped trying to interact with my classmates. I just withdrew into myself and fantasized about telling them off or proving that I was better than them. But they still made me cry.

So what was going on there? If I knew that I was supposed to just brush it off and not let it affect me, why was I crying and escaping to the school psychiatrist's office on an almost daily basis? Why was I still miserable even though I was trying my best to be happy?

I thought about this every time I heard someone saying that "you shouldn't let other people get you down." After all, I was doing my best to keep them from getting me down, but they were still succeeding. Was I just not doing a good enough job of it? Was there something wrong with me? Was I just a pathetic loser who couldn't deal with the real world? If ignoring bullies was the best way to make them stop, why were they still dumping on me? Why couldn't I do a better job of ignoring them? Everyone kept saying it wasn't a big deal, so why did it feel like such a big deal to me? Why couldn't I be happy?

Everyone experiences anxiety at some point in their life. For someone to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, however, the anxiety has to be so extreme, so irrational, so crippling that it literally makes it impossible for you to live a normal life. To give an example, I just finished a year abroad in Germany. I lived in a dorm where sixteen people shared the same kitchen, and for most of that year I starved myself because the idea of being in the kitchen and having to face my dormmates while I cooked my food was horrendously terrifying to me. Now, you might wonder, how the hell is that kind of thing terrifying? That's not scary at all. Well, that's why I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

See, I'm not very good at small talk, and while I was in Germany, I had the added difficulty of having to do small talk in German. And when you share a kitchen with fifteen other people, odds are you'll be cooking a meal at the same time as someone else. This means you're in for a very awkward 10-20 minutes of silence unless you make some small talk while you wait for your food to cook. Now, when you're not very good at small talk to begin with, and you can't understand what the other person is saying or respond without sounding like a moron, you get to the point where you'd rather not have to participate in it at all. So, for me, going into the kitchen meant either spending the entire time trying to act like I was too busy cooking to talk (which is damn near impossible when you're just boiling water) or struggling through a few minutes of painfully awkward conversation. I didn't like that feeling, so I chose to avoid it altogether by only using the kitchen when it was empty. In other words, waiting until two in the morning to make myself some dinner, or surviving on candy and sandwiches bought from the store across the street.

Now, before you say anything, let me point out that I knew that I was being irrational. It's much smarter to suck it up and deal with some awkwardness than to starve yourself, so why was I choosing the latter? Well, that's the thing. I know that the former would have been the better solution, but I couldn't force myself to do it. To me, it wasn't worth that horrible feeling of dread in my stomach that came every time I thought about what could happen if I went into that kitchen. Not what would probably happen, but what could happen. See, my imagination likes to run off without me and come up with the most horrible scenarios that I can't get out of my head no matter how hard I try, and for whatever reason, these scenarios hold more power over my mind than plain and simple logic. I know that logic should be the winning power in this case, but when I'm standing at that kitchen door, sheer logic is nowhere near powerful enough to make me go through it. It's stupid. It's frustrating. It's confusing. But it's what happens, and it's incredibly difficult to change that.

Of course, that's not to say I haven't tried. In fact, I've been trying to overcome my anxiety for several years now, though before I was diagnosed with anxiety I thought of it as trying to overcome my shyness and become more outgoing. And the good news is, I've been succeeding. If I take where I am now and compare it to where I was in middle school, I can see how many things that used to take a lot of courage for me as a teenager are now things that I do without a second thought. For instance, I remember wearing one of my sister's t-shirts to school one day. The shirt had a picture of a monkey in a ninja outfit and the caption "ninja monkeys are meeting as we speak, plotting my demise" written on it, and when I wore it to school, I wore a zip-up sweatshirt over it and had to work up the nerve to unzip it and show it off to my friends (I couldn't even dream of showing my classmates). Nowadays, half my shirts use that same kind of humor and I don't even think about how other people might react to them (except for the one with the duck and the martini glass, that's one I'll never wear to work, but that's because I work with 2nd graders and the teachers probably wouldn't appreciate it). Not only that, but I don't have to spend twenty minutes working up the courage to speak up in class, or to ask a friend or acquaintance how their day was. I haven't started crying in class just because of something a classmate said to me. I've improved so much over the past eight years, but I still have a hell of a long way to go.

Having an anxiety disorder isn't a choice. It's not even close to being a choice. After all, what reason would I have to keep doing this to myself? It's obvious that I missed out on a lot by letting anxiety rule my life the way it has.

Except I've never 'let' it rule my life. Saying I 'let' it rule my life implies that I'm just not trying hard enough to overcome it, and that's where I get pissed off. I know that it doesn't make sense to be so anxious about the stupidest of things. I'm painfully aware of that, because people have been telling me it's stupid for years. Trust me, I can tell when I'm being irrational. And yet, it still happens, whether I want it to or not. Does that mean I'm just not trying hard enough? I don't think so. I've pushed myself to the limit trying to make myself be brave. The trouble is, for me, and many other people who have been diagnosed with a disorder, trying your hardest just isn't enough. And that's not our fault. We're fighting an uphill battle here. Our minds have faulty wiring that makes doing completely normal things ridiculously difficult. Think of it as being born without any thumbs. You can see that other people can do all these things with their thumbs and you know exactly how to do it yourself, but you're still stuck having to do things the hard way because your thumbs are missing. But nobody is going to look at you and say, "Stop letting your lack of thumbs keep you from holding things normally. You're just not trying hard enough," because it's pretty fucking obvious that you can't hold a pencil right if you don't have any goddamn thumbs.

Of course, while you can't increase the digits on your fingers, you can always increase your ability to overcome anxiety through logic, so one might argue that it's unfair to compare a physical disability with a mental disability. So, let me offer this alternative: telling a two-year-old to start speaking in complete sentences is not going to accomplish anything, and most people would see anyone who tells this to a two-year-old as a complete moron. The two-year-old is more than capable of learning how to speak in complete sentences, but it's going to take a few years for them to master that skill, and no reasonable person is going to condemn them for it.

Now, let me finish by saying I don't think it's right to go around being a pessimist just because you have a disorder. I think that "happiness is a choice" is a perfectly reasonable statement, but for someone like me, it's nowhere near as simple as it sounds. Yes, I have chosen to start therapy, take Adderall, and force myself to face difficult situations in order to overcome my anxiety, but it wasn't an easy choice. It took several years, a shitty roommate, and a course in basic psychology for me to look into the possibility of having an anxiety disorder, and it's taken a lot of therapy and self-exploration to get to the point where I can feel comfortable with who I am and not feel like I'm at fault for not being able to handle a situation the way most people would without so much as a second thought. I choose to work towards happiness, but no matter how much work I put into it, I can't always stop those feelings of intense fear and self-hate from overwhelming me at the most inopportune moments.

"A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be," but the fact is, sometimes our minds don't do what we want them to, and to say we're not trying hard enough to be happy is to say we've failed as human beings, whether that's your intention or not. And let me tell you, after a certain point, when you're constantly being told that your misery and pain is something you're doing to yourself, even though you're trying your best to make yourself happy, you can't hear the words 'happiness is a choice' without wanting to punch whoever says them in the face. Happiness is a choice, but for people like me, it's one of the most difficult choices in the world.

(Edit: I think this comic sums it up perfectly: http://xkcd.com/828/ )

Daily Story 19 - Paper Towel Drama

(Note: this isn't completely 100% accurate, but the ideas behind the thoughts are the same as what went through my head just before I wrote this.)

I go to the bathroom, I wash my hands, I pull the paper towel and it tears, not at the perforated edges, but right in the middle of the sheet.

Oh, I should probably pull the rest.

Nah, this way it'll save paper.

But now it's all funky with half a sheet.

I toss the half-sheet I used into the trash can.

So? It's saving paper.

But now that half-sheet's going to feel sad. It really ought to be reunited with its other half.

Oh, for- really? Are you really going to go down this road again?

It's so lonely!

I exit the bathroom.

Forget about it! Those two halves didn't get along anyway.

Yeah, okay, I guess you're right- but wait, how do you know that? You're just making things up!

I walk down the hallway.

Oh, God, not this stupid argument again.

Oh yeah, you're right. IT'S JUST A DAMN PIECE OF PAPER TOWEL! IT DOESN'T HAVE FEELINGS!

That's just mean!

IT'S NOT A REAL PERSON! IT'S AN INANIMATE OBJECT!

Okay, yeah, you're right... but still, it just doesn't feel right to have a torn half-sheet hanging there...

It. Saves. Paper.

Actually, whoever uses the bathroom next will probably just take that and the next full sheet, so it's not really saving anything.

Oh, for- IT DOESN'T MATTER! IT'S ONE IN THE MORNING! STOP DOING THIS TO YOURSELF AND GO TO BED!

I'm trying! It's hard not to think about it, though!

Hey, I should write this down, it's kind of funny.

I get back to my room.

Yeah, actually I forgot to write today's daily story. Guess I should've waited to turn the computer off.

I think about it, and I admit, I really don't know what's wrong with me. Oh wait, yes I do. Never mind.

Good night, everyone.

Ha ha, my thoughts are talking to you. I am communicating with you telepathically. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I finish this story, upload it, and go to bed.