A seven letter word

I had a major anxiety dream last week, in which I was supposed to meet Zirpu at BART but I couldn't find the car, and there were kids in the parking lot scribbling on cars with permanent markers. I wanted to find my car before the scribbling kids did, and I had to meet Zirpu. Several times I pressed the key to make the car beep, and I would follow the sound only to discover my car wasn't there. It was a very upsetting dream, and I wasn't sure what was triggering so much anxiety. I didn't feel that anxious in my real life last week.

Anxiety is a vibration centered behind my belly button. It's like a wheel spinning back there. When the anxiety is bad and ongoing, I get a pinch in my shoulder blade that I'm convinced would go away if I could take a drill to it.

At the end of August I became so anxious I started to wonder if I was losing my grip (as much of a cliche as that is, I really did feel as though I was losing my grip on myself). I had had to fly from Boston and I could barely stay in my seat, even though I was sitting next to Mom. This fear of flying is relatively new and beyond frustrating for me, who had always traveled at least twice a year since I could remember. Anyway, it felt like the flying fear didn't go away. I faked feeling normal, when I didn't at all. I drove, I rode BART, and I traveled over bridges and skyways, because that's what people do.

I thought at the time that it was because it was the start of a new academic year, and I wasn't doing anything. As I said before, my new year has always started in September. I thought that I might be feeling all that anxiety about driving and BART and bridges because it was transferred from my anxiety about what I was going to do next. Furthermore, I hadn't expected that I would still be unemployed, and have no prospects, by then. Through September I thought that if I was still rationally explaining the source of my anxiety to myself I probably wasn't really losing my grip, I was just feeling very anxious.

What did I do? I must have just kept putting one foot in front of the other, like the song says. I'm not really sure. I didn't talk about it with anyone, because just thinking about it made it worse. I don't feel anxious all the time now, but I can't remember when I stopped feeling so awful, or why.