About Thursday May 21, 2026 appointment
Stressful challenge: Alicia wants me to discontinue all caffeine after 1pm (or second best, after 3pm). Aaaaack! I don’t know how to do this. I like my 10pm or 1am Mountain Dew.
Driving home from Ring Game, browsed right into the new song Hit the Wall by Gracie Abrams. Just the right music and lyrics for an event cut short and how that made me feel about life.
I’m plagued by “a thing” that happens when I leave Tim. Research seems to best describe the feeling as separation distress. Last 5 minutes of session I’m watching the clock, forecasting the leaving. After goodbye, driving to next thing is the most miserable part – sad, lost, frozen thickness around my core and chest. Not ready to stop talking. I’m leaving a place I still wish I could be. I fill every inch of attention with hyperawareness. Every moment driving (mirrors, lane changes, controls, surrounding scans, mechanical sounds intense) becomes a surreal dissociation. Being completely in the moment. Mindfulness on steroids. But I can’t stop because if I leave even a crack of space, the sadness pours through. The hyperawareness is a dam. Once I successfully complete next task, feeling can start to retreat.
Today, a parking spot when/where I need it most. A near perfect parallel parking maneuver… mood shift, I got better, slowly started to finally get out of the separation distress.
I need to know why getting your way, getting what you want can make depression go away, even for a moment.
Bad feeling is lingering.