anxiety

“Perfectly Willing to be Perfectly Human”

Posted by

2

Midwestern cold knows not mercy. It crawls and creeps into every crevice until even the breath you take is sharp against your lungs. The kind of bitter that leaves you nauseously trying to warm your fingers against your dad’s chest when you wear the wrong gloves.

I held the barrel as steady as I could but still it wavered. My adrenaline made it difficult to sight in that small spot behind the shoulder where he’d always told me to aim. On an exhale, with the heat of my breath forming moisture beads on the gun, I closed my eyes and pulled tight the trigger. The deer never took another step.
“You got ‘im,” my dad said. All his words were edged with giddiness and somehow the mistake of washing my hair with Pantene instead of doe urine was forgotten. (I may be admitting a near 20-year secret that this wasn’t by accident. Sorry Dad- we all have our limits.)

Trauma works in a similar manner. Sounds, smells, images on a billboard or commercial, and suddenly like the deer I cannot take another step. It’s a bullet between the eyebrows of my past. Unseen until it’s too late.

This anxiety disorder thing I became aware of when I was thirteen and pimpled. This thing I’m still learning to manage almost two decades later. It can throw me into defeat about as fast as a deer drops. I start to believe I’m stuck and wonder if I’ll forever be doomed to a life of fear. Talk of hope begins to feel like a hoax.

Professionals call it “all-or-nothing” thinking. Isn’t that a dainty little package? I prefer to name it a “slippery slope of lies,” or possibly even “perfectionism.”

When I can pull myself far enough away from this type of thought-processing I start to ask questions like: What if I embrace the difficult, ugly bits of my life along with the graceful? How would it look to say yes to the hard the way I say yes to the easy? What if beauty is in the ashes and connection happens from being vulnerable about our wounds?

“What if part of God’s message to the world was you? The true and real you?”   -Donald Miller, Scary Close

My past doesn’t define me. Speak. Believe. Repeat.
But it is part of my story. And I think that might just be okay.

“I am willing to sound dumb.
I am willing to be wrong.
I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool.
I am willing to express a theory.
I am willing to admit I’m afraid.
I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before.
I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one.
I’m willing to apologize.
I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.”   -Donald Miller, Scary Close

Put Some Cotton On Your Eyes

Posted by

0

Take a cotton ball. Spread it so the fibers thin slightly and it’s like an oval piece of mesh. Now place this over both eyes and live your life. Go about making coffee and love. Plan meetings, playdates, talk on the phone and write a thesis. Buy groceries, mow the lawn.
Remember as you go about doing all your doings, your friends and family still see clearly. They have no cotton. They’re the ones in the background constantly chanting, “You will feel like yourself again. Just wait.”
And when they accidentally let a chuckle escape their mouth because they know your behavior is erratic, that soon you won’t be crying over the dandelion spores and potato chips the kids put in the back seat of the car, try your best not to kick them in the shin and then point.

Welcome to a slight understanding of what it’s like in the midst of mental illness. Everything hazy, stuck, and you just can’t see your way through. Even with all the yoga and fish oil the doctors suggest. I know, I know. It does help, but when I’m on the floor in fetal position, my body rocking from a rush of adrenaline, I’m not so much thinking about the best use of down dog. Not to mention how everything seems to take 3-4 weeks or forever which also is not the best of help for immediate circumstances.

Folks, my cotton has fallen. It’s like I can breathe again. For every minute I was fighting for a sense of reality I am now opening my hands in gratitude for the relief. I mean, I can still be moody over my son’s screeching noises. But even the most sane person would find neverending mouth-farts annoying after awhile. Get ahold of yourself child.

I know I have taken small freedoms for granted when I enter a sixteenth entry of symptoms in my journal which say, very mild, almost unnoticeable. The words track two weeks of acclimation. Two weeks in the trenches of upheaval, finally claiming calm.

It’s as I rummage through the laundry basket that I hear their laughs come unexpectedly. It surprises them because they start slowly until one kid’s giggle feeds the other until they are a mess of silly. I smile broad, full, and feel it deep in the reserves of my chest. I take a second to realize that a smile is progress. I am engaged in my life and not clawing for a sense of normality.

There may be a few final shreds on the eyelashes, but I’ve made it. And not all on my own.

My Pulse Tells The Story

Posted by

0

Odds are good that my neck was fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. I didn’t see it. I didn’t have to with the way my pulse rocked my body.

“Downstairs. Now.” I shoo everyone behind ushering hands and a controlled voice. The same one I use when one of the kids gets too close to a campfire or we are under a tornado warning. The one that says, listen up, this is important, I mean business.

“Why?” they ask at full attention.
“Because Dad is losing cookies he didn’t even eat. He’s sick.”

Someday we will sit around a fireplace with their future spouses in cable-knit sweaters holding spiced cider and they will be telling these stories. Mom was always walking around in rubber gloves, spraying bleach until we couldn’t breathe and in such a panic. I will laugh at myself, charmed at how they tease my silly ways. Because even now I know how ridiculous I am.

We were with friends a few nights ago. Count 4 adults and 7 kids and you know why we’re in this predicament.
I sent a text, “Little one has a fever, sorry.”
My girlfriend sent on back, “We have tummy issues, sorry.”
This is when my joints lock and I forget to breathe evenly. I try to remind myself that I will take the slime as it comes, if it comes. I vow not to monologue a series of what-if scenarios that will force me into a catatonic state. I shut my eyes and whisper, you can do this, and try to believe myself.

Instead, I did what any self-respecting phobic would do and slept head-to-toe next to my husband. Hey, at least I stayed in the room. But I wasn’t risking any midnight cough attacks in my direction that might warrant a bend over the toilet the next day. No.

Tired when I lay down, it wasn’t long before I was watching the moon edge its way over my pillow in a striped pattern through the blinds. Thoughts raced. And the more I tried to settle down the worse I got.

Calm yourself, muscles.
Balance out, breaths.
Trust Him, heart.
Do your magic, small round pill of heaven from my psychiatrist.

“The fear of this is much more paralyzing than the reality,” I said to Chase. I entertained the idea of just making myself vomit to prove it couldn’t kill me. And what is death? This is what the experts advise when I’m doing catastrophic thinking. “Go into it. Answer the ‘could’s’.” Well, then, it’s about two minutes of horrible and then it’s my favorite movies or a nap or a great book until the next two minutes of horrible. It will not do me in, though it will be uncomfortable. I will not die.  

“How’s the family?” I text today. “Long night?”

No survivors.

But something changes in the hope of my morning. While I consider isolating in an encapsulating, germ-repellant suit or living out my years in rubber gloves, I find hope.

Truth is, I’d rather be sick with a close friend, than sterile without one.

 

“…the silence is too big, my voice too alone.”

Posted by

0

I break through the hush in the room because it’s my turn. I am awkward, in the medium between child and adult, and trying to find my way to the person that is me. Normally I relish the chance to perform, always wanting the biggest speaking part or sweetest solo in junior choir. But on this day, the silence is too big, my voice too alone. I know that I have to start, and once I do I can’t stop or I’ll look foolish.

Every desk is facing me, as is my entire sense of worth. It is more than I can handle and it’s closing in so fast that my heart speeds to catch up. I feel out of my body, detached from anything but the fact that I’m on show. So I do the only thing that will connect me back to myself. I run out of the classroom.

“It’s my skin that is difficult to escape.”           -Ann Voskamp

Over a decade and through a thousand more episodes like this one, I’m sitting in therapy angry, drained, and desperate for answers. I’d pleaded with God to take it away, I’d been to counseling for years, and pretty much tried everything short of bleeding out, though that seemed like a viable option at the time.

“It’s very manageable. Don’t worry, we’ll tackle this,” the psychiatrist tells me. I nearly break at her words. Thank. God.

Panic disorder. It is part of me. But it’s not who I am.

At my worst I’d have ten attacks a day. I was scared to make phone calls, avoided study groups. In college I dropped out of courses (though I forced myself to do public speaking and barely survived), or simply skipped projects that required my stage presence. I remember calling my counselor at one point, my second child just a tot, and asking her if this was something I should be concerned about.

“I would be worried if you were having one attack a day. Ten is a problem.”

Well okay then.

It took the right doctor, the right medication at the right dose, and some serious cognitive therapy, which are just fancy words for stare it in the eye and don’t back down. It’s a “God, hold my hand every step because I just don’t know if I can do this,” kind of deal.  

The truth? I will always have this. It will float around in the background of my life until my hair is silver and I can’t stand on my own feet without help. It’s a genetic predisposition on my mom’s side, which is comforting that if Chase gets fed up with me and sends me to the loony bin, I’ll have company. 

It takes some kind of strong to be with a person who goes through days of anxiety. That just needs to be said.

Also the truth, I don’t have to let it control me. I make the decisions around here. Like cancer or diabetes, it’s a daily choice to stay as healthy and vibrant as I can. There are good days and hard ones. Setbacks and progressions.

But I choose to fight, and “live life to the fullest.” -Jesus