If You're Here, You Must Be Fine

The Rehearsal, autism, Nine Inch Nails, recession indicators, and the end of the world, probably.

It’s been a while since I shared my depression story about accepting the fact that I’m not going to be the next Gillian Flynn. People have checked in with me, which I found funny because I didn’t think it was all that big a deal, and it was just another realization that I’ve spent my entire life programming myself to think that nothing is a big deal. My writing career is just silly. My hopes and dreams are silly. Everything happening around me is more important than cringe little old Rebecca with her dumb writer dreams.

I struggled to sleep again last night. Ended up sleeping on the couch yet again. Back in the day I used to have such an issue with it. My husband used to snore a lot and I used to always wake him up to stop him, and then he’d go on the couch and I’d have the bed to myself.

Now when I struggle to sleep, I just take two pillows and my ratty anxiety blanket downstairs and I camp out on the couch. It’s kind of a nice change sometimes. I like being kind of uncomfortable, just forced to accept reality and sleep. If something bad happens, the cocktaiels will start chirping and they’ll wake me up.

The anxiety blanket is a childhood thing. It’s white and probably some like 1970s hospital blanket. I usually keep it at my feet at night. It’s soft on my toes. My mom keeps hawking at me every time she comes over and folds it. “You still have this?” she asks.

I’ve been using it more often lately.

Back when I was kid, I used to rip some of the pilled up fibres and rub the soft fabric under my nose. It’s something something I’ve noticed both my kids do when they were younger, is rub stuff under their noses when they’re anxious, stressed, feeling like the world isn’t real, like something really bad is going to happen.

Sometimes my husband sees me wrapped up in the anxiety blanket. “Are you okay?” he asks.

I always tell him that I am. Sometimes I’ll tell him what’s wrong, but then I always say that it’s not a big deal, actually. I just need the blanket because it’s all that I have.

Sometimes now, ever since I wrote my post, when I write I have my anxiety blanket with me. Sometimes I call it my autism blanket, because ever since the algorithm got wind of some of my weird tendencies, it’s been feeding me doubts and questions about myself.

Back in December, I asked my doctor if I could talk about it. She said to do some online tests and then book an in person appointment so we could talk about it. I did the tests. I didn’t book the appointment. I booked a phone appointment so I could talk about my potential IBS instead.

I dunno. I don’t need to get tested. I’m okay. I watched the second season of The Rehearsal and I’m okay with not knowing. I’ve always kinda liked not knowing stuff, while also hating the feeling of not knowing stuff. Most of my writing has always existed in this sense of dread. Why change what I’ve already become accustomed to?

Sometimes I wonder how many couch nights I’ll have. This might go on for a while. I’m dreading all sorts of things just writing this. I booked tickets to see Nine Inch Nails in August, and now that the Peel it Back tour has started, setlists are now posted sporadically between the shitty AI and the catered ads and dread-drenched posts on my Facebook feed. The US might drop a nuke soon, but I really hope they hold out so I can hear “Right Where It Belongs” live.

It’s one of my favourite NIN songs.

My anxiety blanket’s just there beside the couch, man. My son knocked it off this morning while he was eating his toast. I wanna pick it up, rub it under my nose, but I’ve noticed that every time I try to write with my blanket, that I ended up clinging to it obsessively and I end up back on YouTube, and I watch more political analysis, and that then I keep refreshing YouTube, and I notice that my feed is more fucked up than it used to be, that the algorithm is recommending me more video essays about cool indie video games, or rant reviews for shitty TikTok erotica, or an analysis about why Labubu’s are ruining white people culture, or about how AI is making Gen Z the most conservative generation to ever live, as if I don’t already know these things. Just more distractions.

I recently cleaned the spare room in my basement and I was pretty happy with how it turned out, considering that I just left half the mess in there and decorated with whatever stuff I just had lying around.

I’ve been getting more writing done in small chunks.

I’ve been playing more board games with my kids.

We recently got a new cockatiel, and I’ve been spending time trying to get the new one to bond with the first few.

I’ve been doing things, anything to spend some time grounded in some form of reality.

I’ve been tackling small cleaning bursts, like sorting some paper, or just sweeping a small portion of the floor instead of rage cleaning.

It’s the little things, I guess.

I don’t really know if I feel any better than I did prior to realizing that I need to let go of my stupid dream of being a prolific author. All these dumb little things never feels like much of anything, because deep down I’m still that good little Christian girl with a whole lot of dread and frustration and absolute anger, and I kind of just have to let it linger a bit. Sometimes I need to take like 3 naps in a day just to manage all this shit. My doctor got me on a decent laxative/fibre/diet so I can actually take regular shits now.

Sometimes all this mundane daily bullshit doesn’t really feel like anything, but it’s all I can fucking do right now.

I’m looking at my stupid autism blanket at this very moment. “Do I need you right now,” I ask. Not out loud but in my head.

My novel’s protagonist does this all the damn time. She doesn’t have an autism blanket, but she sleeps on the couch and she’s addicted to the 24 hour news cycle, and sometimes when she feels enough dread she just wants something really bad to happen, something to end the monotony, she won’t have to spend so much time living in her head anymore.

Nobody was meant to thrive in this.

My protagonist doesn’t. She dies at the end.

But she exists in my stupid book that nobody will read. I’ll keep writing it because it keeps me sane. There’s still that bargaining part of me that hopes there will be time for me to finish it, to publish it, to sell it and make a little money. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have that writer dream, but I’m learning to accept that I need my writing only for me, so I can keep taking care of my kids and my house and my birds, and so I can keep spending quality time with friends and have conversations with people in real life, and say to smile and “Good Morning” to strangers on the sidewalk.

Sometimes, when I get off the bus, I look at them in the rear view mirror, and I wave and I say “Thank you!”, and then the other people who get off the bus behind me end up doing the same thing, and it just feels good, knowing that they did what I did, that even though I’ll probably never be a bestselling author, that I can make some other frustrated person staring into a doom rectangle physically thank a public serve worker in real life.

Sometimes that hits just as good as my anxiety blanket.

Sometimes I still find ways to be hopeful.

Sometimes I do feel like I’m where I belong.