Sick or Anxious?

I love having anxiety.

I mean that in the completely opposite sense of what is written there.

I’ve been not feeling well for two weeks now. In the beginning, I know it was a true illness. I had a fever. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t breathe.

My energy has been low, but that might be expected. I’ve been off my feed, eating about half of what I usually consume. That’s OK, isn’t it? I haven’t been exercising either.

Now, in the last few days, the fever seems to have passed on, and my sinuses are clear again.

But I still feel sick.

My body feels leaden. My appetite is poor. And when I do eat, I feel a little not-right afterwards.

Do I still have a stomach bug?

Well, my ears have stopped ringing in their ‘sick’ tones, too. I’m not sick. Why do I feel so downtrodden?

I think it’s anxiety. I lost a week (or more) of productive work time, and I’m behind in the lab. I’ve got a huge pile of contract and research samples to analyze. And the mass spectrometer has a leak, which I can’t fix until the repair materials arrive.

I’m a wreck.

Compound that with the fact that I’m supposed to go to the field toward the end of July. So all these analyses need to be done by then. It’s contract work, after all. There are deadlines. But the practicality is that I can’t run that many samples. Mathematically, it’s pretty much impossible, especially given that I need to prepare for field work. And for teaching in the fall. Where is this time going to come from.

Field work is already stressful, all by itself. I need to prepare and get there and get the job done in a limited time frame. I have to worry about what I’m leaving behind at home, and make sure everything that needs to be done in my absence actually gets done. This year, I may have to bring my son with me.  And it’s a four-day drive to get there. And… I have no funding.

Slump.

Even though leaving is four weeks off, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I feel sick. I just want to crawl off somewhere and hide. I don’t know if I can do all this and do all the other things I want to do, like write and sew. I’m frantic, and I kinda want to throw up.

Yup. It’s anxiety.

Help.