I hate GAD and not quite knowing what I'm anxious about. Things start to warp so rainy days take on more significance than rainy days deserve! It reminds me of Madelaine L'Engle's book, A Wind in the Door which literally starts, "It was a dark and stomy night" like the cliche.

My husband claims I don't have an "I don't know" bucket. I want to know always what I can reasonably expect to happen. We don't have Thanksgiving plans, there's 2-3 things happening "around" us but I was banging on him yesterday to decide on what we want and "go for it," put our interest/energy behind it. A couple years ago we ended up with just ourselves and went to a restaurant early in the day and when we got home, there was an embarrassed message from his brother inviting us up (only a couple hours away). We could easily invite ourselves there or have been invited other places but we hang back and "wait" to see if so-and-so is going there or what's happening, etc. To a lesser extent we do the same thing for Christmas week.

When things get muddy, when I get several things started and one or more develop a problem of some sort or I get unsure of my choices, I start feeling like I'm juggling knives blindfolded or something.

Early September, I was taking two courses in grad school for this semester and had a medical problem that frustrated me and I just dropped out of school one morning and deleted everything having to do with school off my computer in anger. An hour later I had signed up for a totally different course of study at another school and reasoned myself into thinking I would resume my first course next semester if I was better by then. I was doing well in the new course but then had an assignment it took 3 tries to get right. After that, the next assignment I still haven't gotten right. I have spent 3-4 weeks between looking at the assignments I can't get and I'm only 3 lessons (but 6-8 assignments) from the end of that course but I may just drop out of it (which will depress me). I have confused myself by finding another course of study like my first course and applied to it (and not heard anything back) and have a fallback plan for resuming my first course if other things don't pan out but none of them interest me but I have nothing else "in the fire" to look forward to or take my interest. So I'm sitting with wreckage around me; a kid with new toys she's broken all of and doesn't know what to do next.

The other night I was with a friend and it was late afternoon but the already dusk since daylight savings has gone. Lights were coming on in buildings, etc. and we were at a coffee shop and she ran in to get us a couple and I was sitting waiting in the car and saw a building that triggered me slightly from 50+ years ago.

The building vaguely reminded me of the first year after my father married my stepmother; I was 5, and my stepmother took me "everywhere" with her because of my age/need for care and/or would have me stay with various girl cousins my age or near my age, etc. Only they weren't "my" cousins, they and their parents were my stepmother's brothers, sisters-in-law and nieces so I hadn't known these people very long or even my stepmother for that matter. But I remember once going to "school" with a cousin who was younger than I was, it was a private nursery I guess, but it was a fall or winter day and I didn't know anyone. My cousin melted into her class and the teacher tried to include me but the kids were younger than I was and I hadn't ever been there before and knew no one, etc. It was a very lonely, "odd-feeling"/disorienting 2-3 hours until the aunt came and picked us up and we resumed "normal" life. But at that period in my life I had lots of experiences like that one, being strange places with people I didn't know. I think this nursery school experience stayed with me because it was so unlike my own public school experience. Thinking about it now I imagine public school was out that day for some holiday that the nursery school wasn't and my mother needed a "babysitter" for me.

But it was a wholly different world than I was accustomed to; different sights, souonds, smells, people, even the sense of "time" was different. I carry that with me now, still. When I lived in Washington, D.C. where the event took place I use to "look for" the real school, I was too young to have a clue where it actually was and all those people are dead or gone from my life. But still I get anxious, like the other night, when I view certain buildings in certain light or I'm in certain circumstances where I am just a "passenger". The coffee shop the other night was in Baltimore, not anywhere near the school. I think the gray dusk brought the feeling out because I believe it was a rainy day when I was at the nursery.

So now I have a rainy morning and I'm thinking about this, feeling the mood, and thinking about my current situations and moods and how I'm drifting along, not quite connected to what's going on "around" me. Where's the sun when you need it?