Day 6: Ten Days to Self-Esteem

We're in the car and we're driving. My son is crying....he doesn't WANT to go to the bigger store. He doesn't want to leave town. He wants to go to Subway. I want a big juicy steak. A reward for my week of intense ridiculous want.

Every store in the world is packed, so I pull into Applebees and grab a little light thingamabob and wait the 20 minute wait for a seat. We sit down, I order a giant NY Strip, cooked medium, with french fries and mixed vegetables and side salad. He gets a hamburger and french fries. She gets macaroni and french fries. We eat and talk and color and laugh and enjoy the evening. I get them desert shooters and we are all so full we can burst. Its been a good night.

"Now it's time to go to the bigger store," I say to my son. He doesn't care at this point. He tells me he was being mean because he was tired earlier. I laugh.

We go to the bigger store (the mall lol) and I let them look at toys. Then on the way out, I have to make my stop at the bookstore. I'm here for a purpose after all. To find something, anything, to help me work through the depression aspect of quiting smoking. I'm in the store looking, my kids run to the kids books and they drag up all kinds of coloring books. I let out a sigh and tell them they can each have one and to go put the other ones back and to stop running around like heathens before I get crannnnnnky.

I'm looking for a book, any book. My daughter walks up and screams "DADDY I HAVE TO POOP!" I look around and everybody is looking at us. I laugh my ass off and tell her to come on. I drag her to the men's room and watch as the guys kinda look at me funny for bringing her in. I ask myself what the fuck they expect me to do with my daughter when I'm out alone with her? Fucking idiots.

The seat in the stall is pure filth and she won't put her ass anywhere near it. So we stand and wait for the other stall to empty. Eventually a little boy walks out and she goes in. I lift her up on the seat and she poops. She leans forward a little too far and the autoflush flushes and she screams and jumps off the toilet. I laugh and put her back up. She says she's done, so I wipe her ass. I hate using dry toilet paper to wipe their asses (I'd rather have a baby wipe), but this is all I have.

We go back to the bookstore and I'm looking for a book and my kids are running down the aisle like banshees. I have to yell at them to settle down. And they do, a little. They come back with books. One princess painting book. One Wall-E sticker book. Huzzah.

I look down and spy a workbook.

Ten Days to Self-Esteem.

I have decent self-esteem, I think, but I pick it up and notice that it's a workbook full of writing exercises dealing with depression and anxiety. Perfect. I don't want to read about shit. I want to write about shit.

I feel funny paying for it, because it seems like a small, very public admission of what I'm going through. And I am not that open. I don't want people knowing my shit.

I get home and play games and watch cartoons with the kids. When they go to sleep, I pull out the workbook and work through the first section.

I take the initial tests. Apparently I have a mild case of depression (surprise surprise), but more interesting is that I have unusually high anxiety. Something I never really thought about before. And quitting smoking, I'm sure, has contributed to that. I'm a fairly anxious person as it is, but this past week I've been a flipping freak about it. In the past I've dealt with anxiety by getting active. Playing sports, walking miles, biking, basketball, fishing, whatever I can get into to get me busy and keep me moving. Smoking cigarettes was a way to relieve a lot of that without having to get off my ass. Now I need to get off my ass again. Which is cool because I WANT to start running and get to place where I can run a couple of miles without stopping. But I can only do so much of that.

I need some other stuff to work through. Meditation or something along those lines. I can't eat suckers forever.

But there I am. I'm about to work through the section section of my workbook. lol I feel like an idiot, but so far it's been educational.

And everyday is the same thing. I wake up, and I feel really good about myself knowing that I've made it just one more day. But that quickly fades and within a couple of hours my mind is slammed. Pounded from all directions with very little let up. It's been like that for about 5 days now with no real noticable change. Everybody keeps telling me that this will subside, and I believe it will, but I'm not there yet and I'm having trouble seeing forward to that day when it becomes something more manageable that "just exist through this day to get to the next one."

But hey, my steak was pretty damn delicious. I'll have to treat myself to one of them more often.