New prospects

At the end of this month I will be moving to Dublin. This will be the first time I move to another country for an extended stay without any plans of returning to Sweden.
Sure, I have spent time abroad before.
During the school year of 2003/04 I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was one of the best and most rewarding experiences of my life.
In 2002, I spent a month in Southern Africa, which taught me more about myself, my privileged life, and the world than I ever even imagined was possible.
However, I always knew that I would be returning to Sweden after the end of the stay. This time, I don't know when, or if, I will be returning to Sweden.
Boy got a contract with Hewlett-Packard of at least a year. HP is already talking about promoting him. IBM is fighting to hire him. Boy is an IT architect and finally got a foot in at a junior level.

The prospect of migrating to another country is in equal parts exciting and anxiety inducing. I go from ecstatic about New Thing to nervous as all hell about moving and packing and papers and flying and New Place-New People-New City.

Maybe things would be easier if I didn't already live with all the wonderful effects of distress symptoms, depression, general anxiety, and social anxiety. I work my hardest to not let those things have too much of an impact on my day-to-day life, but it is a fact that I get exhausted rather quickly. Moving to a new place with a lot of Unknowns is racketing up points on the Anxiety Scale at an alarming pace and I am using all tools I have to keep from having a panic attack. Right now, my life is exceptionally strictly planned in order to keep me sane. Any and all changes without prior notice upset my balance and make me feel the ice cold tendrils of anxiety.

Anxiety is not "feeling nervous". Anxiety is not "I just need to calm down". For me, anxiety is the inability to think, inability to plan ahead, and inability to come down from stress. It's the weeks of sleep deprivation, of too much energy while being absolutely exhausted. It's adrenaline and nor-epinephrine shooting through every nerve and leaving me feeling exposed, lonely, and raw.

Don't get me wrong, I am so very excited about moving. I've been wanting to visit Ireland for many many years and to be able to live there is filling me with happiness. The new opportunities I see before me makes me want to bounce around in joy.
The moving in itself is the hard part. Packing away, throwing away, and selling eight years of accumulated stuff. Sorting out what I want to bring and can bring, and things I want to bring, but have to ask my parents and/or friends to bring at a later time. Going through things I once thought I couldn't live without, but now are of no use at all.

Depression is not "I feel sad". Depression is not "life really sucks right now". Depression is not "I deserve something better than this". For me, depression is the crushing feeling of being irrelevant to the world. For me, depression is not having enough energy to feel any kinds of feelings or even get out of bed in the morning. It's the thought that nothing has enough purpose to be bothered with. It's not making my bed, because I'll just sleep in it again anyway. It's eating bread without butter or toppings, because meh can't be bothered.

And in the midst of this Don't Care whirlwind there's the eye of the storm that is DUBLIN! A fresh start and all those cliches. The opportunity to let the past pains be nothing more than memories that shaped the person I am.
A new place with people who will only know the person I am now - strong, confident, and independent, not the frightened, lonely girl I used to be.

22 days to go.