Did my daily emotional tapping, got my chicken fix, took a shower, and brushed out my hair which is now almost long enough to pull to the sides when brushing.

Strength training yesterday at the clubhouse was fun, though a bit more challenging than I expected. Though I may be stronger, most of the ladies are a lot lighter and frailer than me, which can make some exercises easier if you don’t have as much body weight to haul. Same people were there except for one I haven’t met before… Charlotte.

They have decided that with “young blood” around, they don’t have to worry about struggling to get up from their mats/steps, cuz I helped pull some of them up, LOL. They were all in their 80s.

The only thing they do that’s annoying is they blast the shit out of 50’s music. Even some of them get annoyed and get up to turn the boom box down.

Claire led the group this time, though she obviously has serious memory problems because she kept stopping and struggling to remember what was next.

Joy walked by at one point and even though she looked right at me and smiled, I wonder if she even remembers who I am since I last saw her at the pool two years ago.

A couple of guys played pool and one used the treadmill.

Anyway, yesterday was a very busy and physical day and today will be somewhat busy but more relaxing. We’re going to shop for new shorts for the trip, plus Tom needs new work jeans.

Tomorrow I’ll do that adrenaline test and we may go treasure hunting at Goodwill.

My vision seems noticeably worse tonight and I don’t know why. Even the larger print on the screen is blurry. The best thing is that I still haven’t had any anxiety since the 6th. I just wish I’d sleep better! Didn’t take anything before bed, and sure enough, I woke up constantly. After a few hours of that, I got up, peed, took a lorazepam, and slept more solidly. I hate how the disrupted sleep is causing me to need to sleep closer to 10 hours instead of 8, but it’s better than being anxious/fearful.

I was just thinking earlier about how the anxiety backed off tremendously after stopping the Lexapro. Well, it did the same thing after stopping the Prozac last year. It’s almost as if the SSRIs reset and normalized my moods or something, not that Stacey, the chicken, the emotional tapping, and other things haven’t helped as well.

I was also thinking about those two dreams where I was told I’d always need crutches to walk yet I walked on my own. Having a history of dream premonitions, I wonder if that’s a sign saying that yes, I’ve overcome this anxiety. I’m not going to dare tell myself it’s gone forever, though, as A, that’s what I thought several times before, and B, perimenopause doesn’t just disappear overnight. I still can’t even sleep.

During one of those times I was asleep, I dreamed I didn’t know Tom and was living in the 4th-floor apartment I lived in 25 years ago in MA.

I took a nap one afternoon and awoke to a loud crashing sound. I bolted out of bed and into the living room, which didn’t “look” right. Certain there was an intruder in the apartment, I ran through the living room, down the narrow hall to the front door, and out into the outer hallway. I peered over the stairwell and saw someone slowly coming up the stairs.

“Please be coming up to this floor!” I urged myself. I was quickly relieved to see that they were and that it was a guy, figuring a woman would be less likely to want to check my place out with me.

“Hi, my name is Jodi,” I said to the guy, stocky, in his 40s, and carrying a package.

“Good for you, Jodi,” he said and began to enter the apartment across the hall as I explained what happened. At first I thought he wasn’t going to help me, and was surprised to find a small club of some kind behind the door instead of an apartment.

But he put the package down and followed me to my apartment, as bored as he seemed. A woman soon appeared beside us as we inspected the living room, me peeking in the closet. The guy then discovered that the living room’s fluorescent bulb had fallen to the floor.

I said, “Wow, I don’t know how I missed that.”

As he screwed it back in, I picked up a clump of something and asked, “Does this look like wood or pine needles?”

They said it looked like wood, and that somehow convinced me, along with the fallen bulb, that no intruder was present after all.

The other dream I remember was very depressing. Something or someone forced Tom and I to live apart. We would not be able to see each other and he would not be able to help support me, though I don’t know for how long this was to go on.

He told me he knew I would want to kill myself, and I did. I felt totally trapped. I didn’t want to kill myself because he was still alive, but I didn’t see how I could survive either and I knew the limited money I had would eventually run out.

I was extremely depressed, had to do my writing by hand, and slept in a parking garage for the first night. When I awoke I gathered what meager belongings I had surrounding me and took off somewhere.

At one point Andy visited me with a female friend. I said, “I’d go back east with you but there’s no way I could afford my share of the rent.”