in a nutshell

I don't know who's shell, but in one.I am feeling a lot of anxiety and looking for a bit of relief. I have found some, but usually in my life I have several ways I would calm it. Alcohol, friends, talking, performing, laughing. I have most of the coping options left but not a lot. I feel a lot of anger and betrayal for  a lot of things but that will get me nowhere. I have been told by several amazing therapists that I am a lost sheep. I have spent my life trying to mask a million different feelings to be acceptable to everyone around me. Oddly I was never really accepted anyway. I gave up finding myself or learning who I was by doing that. That seems to be a waste of about 30 years give or take. I am on that journey now. There are a lot of emotions that go along with that. It is exciting at the same time. In one spectrum I am horrified that I am not who I thought I was. In another spectrum I am free and thrilled that I get to find myself, and who I used to be is an amazing person, but a very unhealthy version. I am healthy now, I have a lot of work to do. There is so much excitement in the feeling that if I have come this far in a short 100 days, so then where can I be in a year, or ten years?In groups or when speaking with someone I talk a million miles an hour. I crack jokes constantly, funny or not. I validate people with my eyes or my words. All the while I am normally crumbling inside with the fact that I am not comfortable. I am trying to bask in my pain now. By doing this I tend to get over it much faster. It is scary and cruel in some ways but so very freeing. It also gives me some sort of control. I sometimes feel like i am crawling out of my skin. For any normal human being that is natural. Human instinct is to make that pain stop. Why would someone want to feel a yucky feeling?Yet at the same life is good and bad and bittersweet.Without that we become stale and boring and who the hell wants that? Tonight at my AA meeting I ran into a friend from rehab. He attends meetings daily and he is sober. Several of the other people in my rehab "club" have gone back "out" and have either had comas, jail or in some cases death. Life was shocking yet calming in some ways that I am there. I decided to change my life and I worked my ass off to do it. I am happy now and so thankful for that.As a Jehovah's Witness I was never completely content like I am now. The chains have been technically broken but they still have their nails in me. I a,hoping that the chains stop grinding their ways into me.