I can hear a lawn mower on outside. It’s that time of year. Will I get my husband to mow the backyard, or will I do it myself this year? I guess we’ll see.

My intention is to write these reflections, these roughly four hundred forty-four words, in the mornings. It’s nearly noon this time, but that’s okay. It’s been a weird morning. I’ve done the bare minimum of the homework I have to have done today. Hopefully after I get these thoughts down I’ll have the peace of mind to do more. It likely won’t be much peace, not in my anxiety-ridden brain, but at least I’ll be able to say I got my writing streak in for the day. One less thing for me to feel guilty about going to bed tonight. 

I’m supposed to lead my class tonight. The subject is networking and interviews, which I honestly don’t have a ton of experience in. They give me all the activities, rough timing for each section, and everything I have to say, I just have to instigate it all. I feel unequipped. I don’t feel smart enough about this subject. Previous weeks lead students have actually had experience and testimonies about their subjects, but me… I haven’t had many interviews. I struggle with networking. As someone who’s only ever worked for family or family friends, other than that one year I worked for my university, I don’t exactly know how to show confidence in the subject matter. 

Oh well. It’s only an hour, it’s not that complicated, I can do it. I know I can do it. 

I need to find a good way to make money from home. I feel like I’ve been given many opportunities but then my anxiety convinced me to turn them down, and now I’m not sure I can look back at them. I’m scared. But money is tight, and that book I want to write is not getting written. I’m too stressed to write. I want to get one of my stories onto a serial fiction website, maybe start making money from that, but I’m too stressed to write. 

I’m not sure I’ve been this sort of depressed before. I just feel… lost. I feel so strongly that I need to be home for my baby, for my husband if he ever needs me, but the bank account disagrees. I feel useless. I feel like a failure. 

But hey, my house is finally clean. I even did the dishes yesterday after dirtying them. I wiped the kitchen counters. I took a shower. Well, I don’t find it hard to shower. 

The shower is my therapy. When my body feels heavy and my mind is reeling, I run away to the shower. It’s strange to me when other people say that avoiding the shower is one of their depression symptoms. When I’m at a low, all I want to do is turn the shower on as hot as I can stand it and curl up beneath the stream of water and cry until I feel a little bit lighter or the water turns cold. 

It doesn’t work as well as it used to.