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OKAY SO HERE’S A GODDAMNED STORY.
So I wrote a book. It’s called Carry the Ocean. The sequel is out Tuesday, It’s called Shelter the Sea. Both are in The Roosevelt series, coming of age LGBT romances featuring characters with developmental and mental disabilities and mental illness, autism, physical disability--people who are not, as Emmet Washington says, on the mean. Anyway, the point of this goddamned story is that in the story I wrote, there’s an arc where a character with anxiety learns how to go to Target, something difficult for him, by blasting Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” in his headphones and then more happens but I don’t want to spoil stuff.
THE POINT here and now is that I have anxiety issues at the moment, they occasionally get acute, and today out of the blue, out of the fucking blue, they did. I mean, I just got done writing a great scene in the WIP, I was super pumped, I was out running a quick errand and I don’t know if it was the despair of Walmart or what, the impending nuclear holocaust or just because anxiety is a bitch, I freaked. I made it to the car and I texted my husband, but I’m sitting there panicking, and I had no idea what to do. I still had one errand left, but even just getting home felt impossible. I was trapped in a fucking car. I had no meds. I don’t bring them anywhere (I will now, goddamn) and the consequence was that I was now fucked.
You wrote a book on this, woman, I told myself. You wrote a goddamned book where you researched the shit out of this. Use your fucking AWARE strategy. I thought, Okay. I’ll use AWARE, but that means I need to go to Target, because that’s my next stop.
And then I thought, Target. I have headphones, and the Carry the Ocean playlist on Spotify.
I’m here to tell you that goddamn song works. I got my stuff and I made it home. I could barely talk to the check out person. I clung to the cart with both hands. I had to do my PT breathing (calms some big nerve). I cried in the car all the way home. BUT I DID IT. Jeremey and I, we fucking did it, and now I’m home and the Ativan is humming in me, baby, and to celebrate that as well as the fact that this is MY book now and I can give it away whenever and however the hell I want...
Carry the Ocean is free through Easter via Instafreebie. Go get yourself some Emmet and Jeremey if you want it and take your own trip to Target. May you also be victorious.