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When we last met, it was November 3 and my mother's um-friend had just passed away and I was in wracks of agony about choices she had made at the beginning of that relationship and hoping that now that the relationship was, perforce, over, I wouldn't have to Deal quite so much with those choices anymore.

The next day, of course, was Election Day, and as you know, Bob, the good guys did pretty well all the way up and down the street. It was a good Tuesday night and a good Wednesday morning.

Which is why it was a surprise when I got to work Wednesday morning and I was still wound up way too tight and feeling much too upset to function and subject to four-or-five-minute crying jags for no obvious reason at random intervals. I did not like it. I have come to expect to feel like this—although not to this degree—for the month of October, but here it was October 36 and I wasn't feeling any better, and that hasn't happened in 12 years. So I said to my boss, in my daily check-in email, I think I'm also going to have to write up some ways I'm realizing my mental health has been not okay for a while now and regrettably may have been affecting my work. Always fun. (To his credit, he immediately said "Well, we've got to find some time for you to come talk to me, okay, because I see an employee say 'mental health,' I sit right up and pay attention.")

( So I made a list. )

Update: HA HA HA when I began it on November 20, this was going to be a post about how I emailed my doctor on like November, I don't know, 5 or 6, and she immediately (like, by that weekend) agreed to double my dose of Lexapro, and within a couple of days I was breathing more easily, and I stopped crying so much of the time, and hopefully if that happens again one of us will realize it a lot sooner so I don't spend so long suffering? And then for some reason I was looking through the old entries in here and found where someone in one of my Discords said "panic attack" on July 23 and apparently none of us (self, Himself, my brother [who doesn't live locally but given that the major precipitating event was evidently moving my mom to memory care, his input is not irrelevant]) listened? So, erm, that wasn't our best collective decision, in retrospect.

And then it turns out it's a good thing I've bumped up my Lexapro dosing, because holy shit the first week of December has been what in the being-my-mom's-children racket could safely be called a humdinger in ways I simply cannot talk about right now. I can feel the tightness trying to tighten up my chest, in fact, and not being able to do it. It's something. But whoo boy.