It's kind of ridiculous how controlling and dominating my thoughts can be sometimes. I had my first day of my labor and delivery clinical today, and it consisted of nothing more than a tour of the unit and some computer training, so pretty low key. No big deal. Tomorrow is just learning the postpartum and newborn assessments (that I already know and have performed on real patients before), and performing a head to toe assessment for our instructor to prove our competence. Also a pretty low key sounding day, right?!

And yet, my brain is working itself up to make it seem like this huge fucking deal when I know - I know - it's not. I've been doing physical assessments for a year now, and the one for tomorrow is even a short, sweet, to the point version. It should literally be a non-issue. And yet, for whatever reason...what if I forget half of it? What if I look stupid? What if I do things out of order? What if I do things wrong? What if my instructor thinks I'm incompetent and she won't let me work with patients? And let me just add, I've worked under this same instructor in a clinical setting before, have had to prove my competency for her before, and she deemed me able to work with patients. So how fucking ridiculous am I being right now? Don't answer that.

This is anxiety at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. It will convince you that you are absolutely, without a doubt incapable of doing the simplest of tasks. It will tell you you're not good enough, that you don't belong anywhere, that you are worthless. Pond scum. The scum that sits on pond scum. And it can be relentless. Like tonight. I can feel a stomach ache starting to build up from nerves when there is LITERALLY NOTHING TO BE NERVOUS ABOUT. It's so frustrating!!!

Sometimes I'm so tempted to just give up, and ask why me? Why do I have to struggle through all of this shit while others will never know this type of crippling anxiety in their lifetime? But I've learned that doing that will only make you crazy. So I just have to believe that at some point in my life, this will serve a purpose. Don't ask me what that purpose looks like because fuck if I know, but it's better than thinking this is all for nothing. It has to be.