Forget It. It’s Sooze-Town.

I’ve noticed my social anxiety and depression have gotten worse as of late. I can’t listen to anyone because I’m too focused on all the shit going on in my head. I have kept it all bottled up for weeks now, and I realized that maybe I should just write everything down that’s going on so maybe I can have it all in one place as kind of a go-to if I need it when I see my psychiatrist in a few weeks.

I don’t know why it started. I was doing so well with my medication, but I started talking about things that don’t really matter with my psychiatrist in order to avoid what’s really bothering me. I do that more often than I’d like to admit. I’m prone to keeping things bottled up like I always have. I know that talking things through helps, but sometimes I can’t make myself do it. I feel like my problems are insignificant, like they don’t matter.

I find it hard to sleep at night because of all the thoughts that go racing through my head. I’m 32-years-old and I have nothing to show for it. I’m terrified of absolutely everything these days and I’ve become a shut-in basically. I can’t drive due to epilepsy, but I want to get out of the house so when the opportunity arrives to go for a drive with someone I always go, but I stay in the car. I can’t bring myself to get out and go inside anywhere. All the people make me nervous. I get nervous being surrounded by so many people and then realizing all those people making me nervous makes me even more nervous. I break out into a sweat. I start fidgeting. I pace back and forth.

I’m not getting any younger and the thought of death is always in the back of my mind. I know we’re all going to die and I used to be accepting of that fact, but as I get older and realize my time is running out I’m becoming less and less OK with it. I’ve always had a great relationship with my mom, and she has always been the one constant in my life; I fear something happening to her and never seeing her again. I don’t know how to shake these feelings. I dread the days she goes to work. I dread the times she has to fly to another state for work. I have this constant fear that something is going to happen to her and I’m not going to know how to handle it.

Then there’s the fear of something happening to me. I know when I’m dead it will all be over for me and I won’t know any different, but it’s just the thought of being dead and thinking about those I left behind and the impact it will have on them. My dad committed suicide fifteen years ago. My grandfather died three years ago. My mom’s boyfriend died almost two years ago. What’s my mom going to do if something happens to me?

It’s stupid, but I think about what happens after I’m dead. I think of things I’m going to miss out on when that happens, trivial things. I won’t be able to see my family or friends anymore. I won’t be able to read another book. I won’t be able to watch the shows that I enjoy. No more walks with my dog. No more sitting outside and enjoying the weather, watching the cars go by. Life goes on long after we’re gone. I want to leave something behind so that I can be remembered. I just don’t know what. I want to be remembered. I have this fear of being forgotten.

It’s like that one scene in “BoJack Horseman” where he says, “Is that life? You’re there, you do your thing, and then people forget.” That’s what I fear the most. I want my life to mean something. I don’t want to be forgotten. What do I have to do to make some sort of impact? I don’t want to just be another name on a tombstone. I see all those tombstones in the cemetery – names of people I never knew. I wonder if other people remember them. How many people go and visit those graves? After a while when the initial shock wears off that your loved one has passed, you visit the grave less and less. I guess I just have a fear of being forgotten. I want my life to have meaning and purpose, but I don’t know how to make that happen.