Pixie's Chronicle: Panic! At The Shop

I guess if I could say one thing for this week it would be that at least it was better than last week. Granted, the title of this entry doesn't make it seem that way, but hey, I'm used to having panic attacks so it wasn't that much of a big deal. I mean, it was the worst one that I've had for a long time, but meh. I'm a tough little cookie and can always power through those situations. They only really hinder me in the moment and for a few hours afterwards so no harm done. Plus, it may have ended up being a blessing in disguise, which I'll discuss a bit later. 

This week overall just feels like its gone on forever. I have no idea why. Nothing has felt particularly different about it. It's just dragged. Has anyone else felt that way, or is it just me? Maybe it's just because I know that I have a week off work coming soon and my brain is just desperate for it to get here so time appears to be dragging. I just want this week to end!

 

So yeah, the whole panic attack thing... If you've been following my blog for a while, you probably already know that I suffer from a wide variety of mental health issues because I'm just cool like that. My brain is completely and utterly broken. My wacky ailments include: generalised anxiety disorder (G.A.D.), social anxiety disorder (social phobia), chronic depression, and post traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D). I might also suffer from obsessive personality disorder and Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (which is something that exists apparently), but they have yet to be investigated. Honestly so many symptoms blend together, and doctors always refuse to give me an official diagnosis for some strange reason. 

This doesn't make life very fun for me a lot of the time. I've got a lot better at dealing with it, but everyone has their off days. Due to the stress of last week, I was already feeling on the cusp of something major when I woke up on Sunday morning. I was having really bad nightmares, I wasn't sleeping properly, I was more jumpy and forgetful/distracted than usual, which are all signals that I'm on the verge of some sort of depression episode or anxiety/panic attack. 

Work that day didn't originally feel like it was going to be that bad. It would just be me and my supervisor that day, and we always get along really well. We have so much in common and have the exact same sense of humour. So I wasn't overly worried about the day. I once again figured that the whole email incident of last week was over, especially now that the regional manager was on vacation again. She moans at us for taking vacation time, only to come back for a week and then go on vacation again, but yet she does the same thing. See, this is all of the little stuff that annoys us and has built up over time resulting in email gate. 

Anyway, the lap-dog ended up calling us a few times in the day and she was not her usual self. She was very cold towards me and my supervisor (who is usually her favourite) so that annoyed us a bit. No matter what's gone on, she shouldn't be acting like that with us. We knew she would be on the regional manager's side in all of this, but still. Normally she's chatty and friendly, but this time she was very short with us. This once again did not help my anxiety. I don't like people being mad at me - as I'm sure most people don't - but my anxiety always makes it a thousand times worse. I know that I brought it on myself, but I still felt like she should have been more professional about the whole thing. 

At one point she ended up calling because once again we seem to be having a staffing crisis. She needed someone to cover another store and once again she picked me as the easy target. Now, here are a few extra things you need to know about my anxiety: I'm terrified of new/unfamiliar places; I'm terrified of public transport (I can only use the one bus to work because it's so familiar); the further I am from home, the worse my anxiety becomes; and lastly, I don't like last minute plans. The lap-dog wanted me to cover the store the next day. I just can't have something dumped on me like that. I need time to mentally prepare myself. Not only that, but it was combining so many aspects that trigger my anxiety. 

I originally said no, but somehow to the lap-dog, 'no' means 'yes'. So she put me down for that shift. In a panic, I called my manager and was practically begging her to talk the lap-dog out of it and my manager told me to leave it with her and she would see what she could do. Anyway, the lap-dog had then somehow talked my manager into thinking it was a good idea, because the lap-dog then called me back and essentially told me that I was doing it whether I liked it or not. I tried to think of some excuse and no doubt I probably sounded really lazy as a result. But I didn't feel like I could tell her I was too mentally unstable to do it because a) it's personal b) she wasn't exactly someone I liked or trusted c) she probably wouldn't believe me anyway because of the whole email scenario. 

So after a very terrified 'yes' from me after a huge amount of peer pressure, the lap-dog hung up on me again. For the first few seconds, I was fine, but then my manager rang me back. And that's when I totally and completely LOST IT!

Most of the time, I can hide when I'm having an anxiety or panic attack thanks to years of practice. But not this time. This time I full on burst into tears with snot dripping down my face as I hyperventilated. I was full on freaking out. I felt sick, I felt dizzy, and I was shaking. It was a good job that no customers were with us at the time. But nonetheless my manager told me to go into the office and calm down. I had warned her of my issues when she had first started as manager a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure she hadn't taken it seriously until now. 

She was so kind to me though. She helped calm me down through my attack and then began to seriously questione me on my issues. She asked if the lap-dog knew of my issues, to which I admitted that I wasn't sure. I had always told my managers about my mental health struggles and I guess I had always supposed that they would tell the regional manager and her lap-dog if it was needed. 

But no. 

Apparently I should have told them when I started the job. 

I got lightly scolded for hiding it all from them, which I suppose I can understand. They do have a duty of care towards their staff after all and I should've prepared them properly instead of being like, "oh yeah by the way I have anxiety lol." My manager then told me that we were going to have to inform the regional manager and the lap-dog about all of this which I wasn't too thrilled about. But still, I really appreciated that she was there for me and helped calm me down. 

She left me to properly settle down before I headed back downstairs onto the shop floor. My supervisor was really nice to me about the whole thing as well and felt partly responsible for what happened which was completely ridiculous. I see myself as like a soda bottle. Life shakes me up sometimes and normally I manage to keep all of the fizziness bottled up inside me. It's not healthy, I know, but at the moment, that's just how I am. I'm working on it. Naturally this means when I have been beaten and shaken too much, I can explode. And that had been one of those moments. 

Then my supervisor ended up having a panic attack, so we just sort of huddled together in a corner to try and ride it out. Mental illness is so much fun. 

The lap-dog then ended up calling me back and she actually sounded more like her old self this time. It seemed my manager had called her back and told her what had happened to me. She was actually really understanding for once and she said that I no longer had to cover that shift and that I needed to tell them about all this stuff so they would know how best to support me. I thanked her and apologised for messing her around like this and apologised for keeping all of this a secret from her. She understood and then left me alone after that. 

Now I've just got to face my regional manager over this. *gulp*

The rest of the week was actually pretty quiet and uneventful. I've just been super tired from long shifts, stupid people, and from my huge anxiety episode at the beginning of the week. Well, uneventful apart from the fact that I nearly killed one of my gerbils. I can feel myself getting heart palpitations just thinking about it. 

I'd bought my gerbils a chew log months ago and up until now, they haven't had a problem with it. That was until Thursday when Venus got stuck inside it. I was just vacuuming the house when I turned around and saw that she was halfway out of one of the holes and that she wasn't moving. I freaked out and rushed over and I could tell immediately that she had somehow gotten herself stuck. I nudged the log, hoping that might inspire her to wiggle her way out, but she wouldn't move. She was clearly scared and stressed so I picked her up and managed to give her a small shake and pop her out of the hole. 

The whole ordeal was terrifying. I was so scared that I was going to lose her and I ended up bursting into tears afterwards. She seemed to be okay apart from being a bit shaken up. I checked for any injuries and there didn't seem to be any. I was more worried about her brain than anything else. I was worried she might have cut off her oxygen supply or something, though she was still breathing, albeit erractically, when I had found her, so hopefully that meant her brain was still getting oxygen? I kept a very close eye on her for the rest of the day, looking out for any signs of seizures, brain damage, broken bones or anything of that sort. Luckily though, she was totally fine. Of course I removed that log straight away. I still have no idea how she managed to get herself stuck, but I won't be letting my gerbils play with that thing again. 

Apart from that incident, they have been doing really well. I've managed to tame them some more and they're definitely getting used to me now. I think they see me as their slave because as soon as I get up in the morning, they dash towards their food bowl and stare at me until I feed them. So I think it's definitely safe to say that they see me as their provider. 

As for writing, annoyingly, I've actually been really inspired this week. I just haven't had the time to do anything about it. It's like my brain is trying to torture me. The only thing I managed to get done was uploading chapter 26 of Madness Within onto AO3, which you can read by clicking here by the way. 

There also seems to be a sudden re-interest in my Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic Project Darkness, and I have no idea where it's come from. That story is years old, yet all of a sudden there's been a huge flux of views and reviews. Am I missing something? I've even had people messaging me asking if they can translate it. I'm not complaining, I'm just... confused? Normally attention towards old fics dies off, but this one seems to have picked up again all of a sudden. Has someone said something about it? I'm even still having fan art made of it, like this one someone sent me recently:

 

But anyay, once next week is over with I'll have a week off and finally have some time to write again. Famous last words. I miss the days when I could write pretty much whenever I wanted. Work has just been taking up so much of my time lately and it's annoying. Because of that, any free time I do have is spent being super tired and not having the urge to do anything. 

I've managed to catch up with a few friends, including TLOS21, which was awesome. I forgot how much our conversations cheer me up. We even made a stupid caption together after she had accidentally paused My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on a funny shot of Twilight:

 

That's definitely how I've been feeling all week. 

Jowy, my boyfriend, has had his Persona 5 game to keep him occupied, but I still feel guilty for neglecting him. I keep trying to get him to play Mariokart or Animal Crossing with me sometimes, but he's not really in the mood for those games at the moment. It doesn't help that we seem to have run out of decent YouTube content to watch together. Especially now TikTok videos are starting to consume everything which he is really not a fan of. I'm kind of indifferent to TikTok, but seeing it really makes me miss Vines. They were the best, and TikTok just feels like it's trying so hard to be the new Vine, but it just can't quite pull it off. I dunno. Maybe I'm just getting old. 

Anyway, I've probably kept you from your day long enough now. Toodles!