So what's happening in the world right now is exactly the images that flash through my brain when I'm having a panic attack about leaving the house to do something as innocuous as getting the newspaper out of my driveway or picking up my grocery order, because agoraphobia sucks.

I've been trying to go to sleep for an hour, but I am fucking terrified to go to work tomorrow because any number of ridiculous scenarios that are playing out in my damaged brain.

What if my neighbor is outside and decides to say hi? Or shoot me? Either one is just as likely.

What if someone blows up I-5? The 99 tunnel?

What if I'm in the lab and someone firebombs the lobby? My lab has the largest concentration of flammable chemicals in SLU!

What if a cop sees my Star Wars license plate frame and mistakes "Long Live the Resistance" for an antifa slogan and decided to shoot me?

I don't know where the correct nut driver is to take the frame off. It's somewhere in the garage.

And that doesn't even begin to touch all the Covid exposure worst case scenarios I'm running in my head right now. With my various medical conditions I _will_ get hospitalized and they'll put my dog down because I don't have anyone to care for her while I'm in the hospital.

And I _know_ none of this is rational. Mental illness isn't rational. You are not going to fix my fucked up brain with a tweet, so do not fucking reply to this thread with advice.

What really sucks is not having a support system. Everyone I know has real problems to deal with and they do not need me dumping my mental shit on them. And I love my parents and talk to them every day, but they don't get mental illness (despite a LONG family history thereof).

I never thought I would be eight months from turning 40 years old and still sincerely quoting Parents Just Don't Understand but 2020 has been really fucked up for everyone involved.