Shipwrecked

I'm scared and overwhelmed and tired. I feel like I'm swirling around in a pitch black ocean after a torrential rain storm massacred my one-man sailboat, and the rip tide keeps sucking me under. And when something new comes along in the flotsam - some new thought or idea or task on my to-do list - I feel like an ice cold wave with cut glass surf is speeding towards me, crashing over my head and suffocating me with sharp needles. I can't catch my breath and the pressure on my chest makes my heart pound.

I'm unable to focus on a single thought and my mind sprints a hundred miles per hour down my stream of consciousness between one moment and the next. I panic.

I coach myself on breathing techniques and throw my brain a life raft - in the form of television - anything to stop my mind from thrashing about. But it just prolongs the problem while deadening my sensitivity to the symptoms. What I really need is help, guidance, support, a safety net of a million dollars (but at this point even a hug would be nice).

I'm scared of being alone, but it isn't even that. I'm just overwhelmed and I'm scared of failure. I'm scared of leaving everything I've known to try something completely new, in a new environment, with new people. I'm scared of having to make new friends. I'm scared that my friends will forget me or I'll never see them again because by the time I get back they'll have all moved on with their lives... not want to come back and visit.

I'm worried I won't be able to do the job, that I'll get fired? No... not fired, but that I won't get a good recommendation for a future position. Hell, that I won't even get a future position and be back on my parents' couch. I'm just so tired of worrying.

I need to lay back and float a bit, ride out the waves or at least tread water long enough to keep my head above all the tasks I need to get done, and hope I don't hit a really rocky coastline...

Although, being marooned on a deserted, island paradise does sound wonderful right about now!