Depression? Paranoia? I really thought I was doing better and now I'm here...

So it's been a bit of a rough time, but I really thought I was on the upswing. Now my anxiety is back and a very low mood has accompanied it. But I'm not sure if my anxiety is warranted or if I'm just being paranoid?

I've been renovating my house, which has been a lot of work. I really like my house - it has a lot of character and is centrally located. I've had some issues with my neighbors across the street which left me feeling paranoid, but I've ignored them for awhile now and they haven't been knocking on my door in well over a month, which is great. But, I'm active on my NextDoor app and have found myself looking at posts from people who have had criminal activity (someone breaking into a garage or a car) and counting how many streets away that is, wondering if I'm safe.

To compound matters, twice now I've found my garage door unlocked and kind of open. My house is set up so that the garage is attached, and there is a door that leads into the basement and another that leads into my kitchen. Both the basement and the kitchen doors have sensors on them + there is a motion detector in the basement, so if someone had gotten into my garage and then gone into either door there would have been an alarm. They clearly didn't. Also, nothing has been taken. Logically, I'm telling myself that if they went to all the trouble to break into my door (twice!) they would have tried to steal something, especially as they wouldn't know there are sensors on those other doors. Logically, I'm telling myself that there is a lawn mower right next to that door, so they would have just taken that. Logically, I realize that the door itself is hard to open and I can be scattered, so it's possible that I (or one of my parents) just forgot to close it all the way.

But, I can't stop my mind from thinking that someone is just opening that door to mess with me.

I also have my parents helping me renovate, which is awesome, but they move things around or things just disappear and it makes me panic. Like last night I went to take my dog on a walk and I couldn't find his harness. I've been staring at it on the couch for a week and last night it was just gone.

This makes me feel really low, like I live in a bad neighborhood because I couldn't afford anything better, and that fixing up my house isn't worth it because I'm just going to be robbed or worse in my own home. And I get very anxious when I leave for work too, afraid that someone will break in and do something to my pets.

It's also been really tricky because last week my cat came back to live with me (he was with my parents because of the reno) and he's been keeping me awake + I've had to keep a close eye on my dog while he adjusts to having the cat back.

I'm of course also having trouble because my friends are all back to having social gatherings and going to tailgates, but I'm still afraid of covid to the point that I have to be really careful about what I say yes to. And I'm the only single one in our friend group, but I don't really know how to get back into dating and my self esteem is so low that even with I match with people on dating apps I'm afraid to meet them in person.

So - it's been rough. I'm just having trouble settling into some kind of life. I feel like I'm on the edge, just waiting for it all to go very wrong and it makes it hard to commit to improvement. For example, I've been working on my dog's reactivity, but I've had to force myself to do it a lot of the time because I think "what if he does something truly awful, or he gets stolen, or he dies, and then I'll remember all this time I spent training with him and just feel sh*tty"?

I know this was super long, I just needed to get it out.

I ended up having a panic attack yesterday as I was in a meeting at work and got a message on my phone that my alarm was going off. I turned it off so it wouldn't scare my dog and cat further, made it though the rest of the meeting, and booked it home. I don't have cameras right now so I couldn't remotely check that everything was okay. Apparently my basement door sensor was just going wonky and that's why it alarmed, so I felt foolish.

I've also got some nerves with Thanksgiving coming up. I plan to spend the day-of at my parents' house and leave my dog behind, but my brother and his family will be over for the weekend and my mom really wants me to come and spend at least one night. It's just really hard with Chisum; he loves my brother and his wife but finds my nephew to be really overstimulating. He's not aggressive towards him really, but wants to chase and play with him and gets frustrated when he's kept on leash and away from him, which leads to me feeling extra stress too. We've been working on muzzle training so that hopefully I can safely give him a bit more freedom, and hopefully we will also get to go out hiking and decompress.

It seems like I have the strangest relationship with my dog though; he's got issues, to be sure, but he's not really a monster - however it's really hard for me to not be on constant alert that he will do something "bad" and I just know that will devastate me.