I had a really good day today at work, came home and spent an hour making a nice dinner for my partner. We've been working things out and I'm really happy.

But then after dinner I went into my walk-in closet/bathroom and saw some baby cockroaches in my shower. Long story short, for an hour and a half all I did was kill them and flush them down the toilet. I counted about seventy at least, no exaggerations here. And I can't understand why they're in the house.. I keep my house very clean: no food left out on countertops, no dirty dishes in the sink, the garbage always gets taken out, I sanitize everything,… I have OCD and I like to clean. But for some reason they're still coming into the house up through the drains. So I went around putting cups over the drains after I got as many as I could see. Not all at once, mind you, but over that hour they just kept appearing. I have been in a state of constant panic. My heart is aching and my chest is tight with anxiety and the beginnings of an asthma attack and my hands are shaking as I type this. I can't sleep, how could i? I discovered one crawling on me. So it's 5 am, summer in phoenix, and the bugs are out. Every summer this happens.

How have I dealt with the fact that they're invading my closet? I packed every item of clothing I own into two suitcases and 2 garbage bags. My closet is bare. I am so afraid that while I am asleep they will touch my clothes and I won't know about it. Then what if I wore them? Thinking about it just makes me ill and I feel like I could just die. My solution is to move to my parents house for a while and take all of my clothes with me. It seems drastic, but I don't know how else to deal with it. I can't stay here and sleep with them in the house. BUT at my parent's house there have been a lot of scorpions in the house. SO I get to pick a hundred cockroaches or a couple scorpions…. I pick scorpions. I don't think they'll crawl into my bed, but maybe they will. I keep feeling bugs crawling all over my skin and I know they're not really there but each time I check I am surprised that there is nothing in these sheets.

All of this just sounds like a nightmare to me, and I apologize if anyone read this and became sick thinking about bugs, too. I hope I haven't offended anybody. I just needed to write out some of my anxiety somewhere. Maybe somebody else can relate to the level of fear and panic i'm experiencing. I'm going to have to call out of work tomorrow to stay home because I've made myself so ill and I'm not going to sleep…. What else can I even do?