Anxiety

Source - I love the quote they put on this blog -
"I now view Anxiety as an unwelcome visitor with no purpose other than to side swipe my self esteem."

This week, I had the shocking realization that I am still very.. very.. very.. fragile.

That something like dumping $1,500 into car repairs quickly sends me over the edge.

The edge of anxiety.

Anxiety and I do not have a good relationship, but anxiety is always in my life.

Anxiety makes me unable to eat. It makes me nauseous with no appetite. The no appetite gets to where it will dawn on me that it’s been 3 days, and I haven’t eaten.. anything. The nausea makes it difficult to even brush my teeth. I can’t count how many times I have fought with my tooth brush, trying to brush my teeth through dry heaves, only to throw up what little stomach contents I have..in the sink. Then I have to start the whole brushing teeth fight all over again.

Anxiety makes me unable to sleep, think, or concentrate.

This week started out like every other week. Running on sheer exhaustion, just trying to get through the day, hoping to make it to the weekend.

Then started the car problems. In stepped the anxiety of how the hell I am going to pay for this? Followed by disappear and feeling completely alone and lost.

To a “normal” person car repairs is just a fact of life. To the widow in me, it is a catastrophic event.

I spent this week trying to force feed myself, trying to get my anxiety under control, trying to sleep at night, trying to not let my anxiety drown me in its smothering ways. Nothing I did worked. Everything just kept piling up in my head.

Then I had the realization of how fragile I still am. 34 months after my husband’s death, I am fragile.

The car repairs left me in a crying heap on my kitchen table. I was looking around my house thinking “this wouldn't be as hard if Seth was still alive.”

In stepped the “holy shit, I am so alone in all this it’s insane.”

I reached out to a friend, trying to find comfort, and was told “It’s not the end of the world.”

Sure, it’s not the end of the world. Not being able to pay my mortgage or having my anxiety take away my appetite is not the end of the world, but in that moment, it was the end of MY world.

Then I went off the deep end. I completely shut down.

I focused on:

-         - Get up

-          -Go to work

-          -Get your work done

-          -Try to eat without throwing up

-          -Drive home

-          -Shut the world out for the night

-          -Go to bed

-          -Rinse and repeat

When I go into complete shutdown mode, life becomes a series of moment by moment. Minute by minute. Just trying to survive without going complete ape shit on someone. You could ask me what I’m doing after work, and I would just look at you with a blank stare.. because.. well.. that’s 4 hours from now, and I can only think about this very minute. I can’t think about 240 minutes from now.

Anxiety is not my friend. Yet it’s a constant reminder of what I have been through and what I am still going through. I am dropping weight at an alarming rate, all thanks to my not friend – anxiety. Sure, losing some weight isn't a bad thing, but I am quickly approaching too thin, and I can’t stop it. Anxiety won’t let up and give me my appetite back. I haven't set foot on a scale to see just how much weight I have lost due to this anxiety episode, but it's a lot.. my "skinny" clothes are falling off at this point.

I have resorted to what my counselor has always told me “With anxiety, eat whatever your body wants. Even if all you want is one candy bar a day, eat that. At least you will be eating something.”

Last night, I turned to my comfort food. The one thing I can always eat no matter how bad my anxiety is. Smothered burritos. For the first time in almost a week, I had a full belly.

I realized I have become cocky. Thinking I am no longer fragile. That “life happens” won’t send me over the edge. I was wrong. I was cocky. I have this messed up vision of what I can handle.

Maybe I need a new tattoo, on my wrist, where I see it with every hand movement I make, that says “Don’t be cocky.”

It would be a constant reminder that I will never be the same person I was before.

Sleep

source

I think I've forgotten how to sleep for more than 4 or 5 hours at a time.

This is a side effect of my second life that really challenges me. I can feel the anxiety I've held at bay all day bubble up when I wake up in the middle of the night. It waits for these dark, quite, vulnerable moments to get a good foothold and then it's a battle between me and the anxiety.

I breathe deeply, in for four counts, hold for two, out for four counts. It only takes one or two cycles of this for my body to tense up again and my brain to swirl with worries. So I repeat the process again and again. Sometimes I can short circuit the anxiety and I fall asleep again. Sometimes the anxiety wins and I give up on sleep and read my book until the sun rises and then I get up.

The anxiety that tries to take over my brain isn't even specific worries. It's not like I wake up and think about all I need to accomplish the next day, or how I'm going to get through some difficult upcoming event. It's just generalized anxiety in a physical form. A racing heart, tense muscles and adrenaline-soaked brain synapses.  It's a fuzzy, non-specific "life is in flux and I feel scared" sensation that sinks down from my brain into my chest and gut.

I want very much to not become dependent on medications to sleep through the night, but the truth is, without meds, It's 50/50 odds at best right now. Half the time I sleep a relatively decent amount and the other half of the time I barely sleep at all. I've adjusted to this in that I don't freak out about it as much. I don't think that I won't be able to function the next day and I don't cancel stuff so I can lie around and somehow make up for the deprivation during the day. I just keep going. I don't freak out as much in the middle of the night, faced with the fact that sleep just won't come to me. I've learned to let the insomnia in and adjust to it. I learned to think of it as extra reading time or something that won't last anyway.

The problem is, I know the one way to avoid it and that's the meds. So I want to take them every night, but I don't because I want to remember how to sleep on my own, so I'm trying to wean myself off them.

Maybe I need to consider that weaning myself off right now isn't as important as sleeping but I wish I could remember how to sleep without them.

How the hell do you sleep through the night again? I can't remember. I used to be really good at it.

Tiny Quiet Plea

source

On January 21st I found out about a man who'd lost his wife, making his daughter the same age I was when my mom died. I wrote about it here.

Since then, I reached out to him and we have found in each other something I believe is more than worth the fear it's causing me to let down my guard and care about someone again.

I have seen him father his daughter with love and deep respect. I have seen him do everything in his power to make sure she feels loved and safe. I have seen her loving him. I'm not yet sure I have words to explain how this has made me feel. I'll have to work on that. To say that this alternate ending to my childhood has been healing is an understatement but it's all I can come up with right now.

I have been able to tell him everything about myself. The grieving, deeply wounded parts of me I've hidden from others. The weakest me, that I hide from myself. It's all been out there for him to see. Instead of running from that, he's come forward through it with me. It hasn't phased him.

I don't have a clue what the future will bring. I'm terrified to hope for great even when I have it right in my arms. But I'll tell you one thing I know for sure.

I asked for this. Down deep, in the part of me I keep hidden from almost everyone, I asked to meet these two people before I knew they existed. I know that sounds woo woo. It does even to me. But I did. I said a tiny, quiet plea that I almost couldn't admit I wished for. I wanted to find them and I did.

I didn't know what they'd look like or what their names would be. I didn't know where they'd live or how I'd ever find them. But I wanted to. And I did. I hope I enrich their lives as much as they do mine.

I realized today, when he asked me to come color eggs with the two of them, that each time I get to participate in some childhood ritual that I missed out on, I'm healing a loss I never really got to claim.
I don't usually tell people that there were no birthday parties, Easter celebrations, Christmas festivities or Halloween fun at my house growing up. And because I never had kids of my own, the rest of my adult life continued the same way. This is the first time I get to be an integral part of those things I missed out on.

It's terrifying to have hope. That's the funny thing. When it's abstract hope, like the vague notion that things won't always be as bad as they can get, it's helpful and comforting. But when it's hope that something you have suddenly in front of you won't go away, it's terrifying. Unless you've been through tragedy it's hard to understand how terrifying joy can be. A fragile, mending heart doesn't feel capable of handling any more pain and when there's joy there's potential loss and pain.

Before I met these two people I had little left to lose and that was liberating. It was an absence of joy and it was a loneliness, but it was also the absence of the feeling that I had so much to lose. When I met them, I felt I had two choices, to continue to be lonely but free of potential pain, or to reach out and risk pain. There is within me, some source of utter fearlessness that can be easily drowned out by the fearful part of my brain trying to protect my heart. That crazy, fearless me knows that I have to push through the fear or forever live without closeness with others. That part of me hasn't allowed me to push this potential happiness away out of fear. However, I live each moment of this with the fear.
But it's possible to feel both fearful and brave. It's possible to be scared shitless and show up anyway. So that's my plan. Show up despite the fear. Live despite the knowledge of the pain that life can bring.

It makes my heart race and chest constrict just typing this, but at least I'm showing up.
And because I am, I get to color Easter eggs with them, a ritual so many might take for granted, but I never could.

Symbiotic Comforting

source

I turned 37 on the 2nd and simply didn't care or want to give my birthday a bit of acknowledgment.

My life right now feels a bit unsteady. It's as though it's on the cusp of something. What, I don't know. The unsteady feeling is rough on me and my anxiety levels have been high lately. The weather is all weird and I'm restless and anxious and irritated.  I'm infinitely sad that Dave isn't here and lately reminders of him abound.

I saw an Ellen episode tonight that featured a scientist. The guy did some fun and flashy science experiments that I know just over 21 months ago, Dave would have gotten so thrilled about and would have doggedly gone to work creating those demonstrations for his middle school science students. He then would have come home and shown me a million pictures of his students lit up over science because of the hard work he had put into the lesson.

I sat on the couch watching this guy and wanted so badly to turn to Dave and start discussing how we could make the demonstration work in his classroom. I wanted to cry and I couldn't. I can't quite freely cry right now as I type this, though I want to. It feels like I need a good cry but it's stuck within me.

Replacing the crying is worrying. I worry about so much these days. I don't quite know where the worrying has come from. I haven't felt this consumed by anxiety since the days Dave was in the hospital and right after he died. It is beginning to get even harder to be alone for so long. I've been longing for someone to just come over and stay the night with me. Just to know another human is in the house with me. I'm suddenly afraid to be alone and I haven't felt that since right after Dave died.

And yet, I still have much to be grateful for. I did get to have someone stay the night last night, my beloved girlfriend who was also there for me right after Dave died. I slept better because she was there. The other girlfriend who was my constant companion after Dave died got me a beautiful rose for my birthday to plant in a big planter for my balcony. The name of the rose is New Year. A new year of hope. I can't wait to watch it grow.

There is someone very new in my life, who was also widowed, who feels like a special gift I was lucky enough to find.

I have choir which lifts me up like nothing else and I have these sweet cats who shadow me everywhere I go, even more so when I'm feeling bad. I have a big trip to look forward to. I have life to live.

I just can't wait for this fog of worry and anxiety to pass so I can once again breathe deeply and enjoy the little things again. I can't wait to feel at peace again. 

I guess more than anything I wish I had someone with me right now to hold me and let me be really weak for a few hours. To cry while supported by loving arms. To hear reassurances from a voice other than my own. I get so tired of reassuring myself. It feels better to hear it from another source, somehow. I feel like maybe I've been so strong for long and I've simply run out of strength.

If anything, the last week or two has shown me so clearly, once again, how I have to reach out for help, earlier on rather than once it's reached a level of complete breakdown.

I need to allow myself to take a break from holding myself up and ask for someone else to do it for me just for a while. It's also shown me that at times, I still have to retreat to a deep grieving place where I simply need to treat myself like I'm in intensive care again. All but my most basic needs have to be put aside until my strength returns and I must get used to claiming that rather than pushing it away as something that is weak. It's damn strong to admit you've run out of strength. It's brave to say "help me because I can't help myself right now". I just forget that sometimes.

If you get to the point where you feel as though you don't have any strength left and even the normal little things that usually bring you comfort don't, I know. I know how hard it is. I know how scary it is. It won't always be. Things never stay the same.

I suppose I'm reassuring myself as much as I'm attempting to reassure you right now, but that's the great thing about this blog. It's symbiotic comforting.

Dream Water or Insomnia Water?

Or in my case, drink to panic and then wake up every few hours to make sure I'm not dead. 

Source

I have just not been sleeping through the night. Not one night in...I don't even know how long. I wake up at 4 or 5 am and lie there in a state of mild unease and anxiety. Sometimes I fall back to sleep and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I take melatonin, sometimes I take Advil PM, sometimes I drink sleepytime tea. Nothing seems to consistently work. The lack of sleep makes me a forgetful, confused and weepy girl. I need a hell of a lot of sleep to function on all cylinders.

Last night, in an effort to get more sleep, I drank a little shot of a natural sleep aid called Dream Water*.

Right after I drank it I went to take my daily dose of Zoloft (I'm serotonin-challenged) and stopped suddenly before I could shake the pill out of the bottle into my palm. I realized with a shock that the "natural" sleep aid I took could have unfortunate interactions with Zoloft.

Then I did what I know I shouldn't have done. I googled drug interactions with zoloft.

The active ingredients in Dream Water are melatonin, 5-HTP and GAMA. I have taken melatonin many times before but was completely unfamiliar with the other two.

The google search led me to a list a mile long of drugs to NEVER TAKE ALONG WITH ZOLOFT. There were little red exclamation points next to each drug name. It may as well have been a giant skull and crossbones and a blinking red neon sign that read "IMMINENT DEATH".

In the list was 5-HTP. Before I panicked too much (I vaguely wondered if I should be making myself barf) I noticed some other medications on the list. They included Advil, almost every cough medicine known to man, and a migraine medication I've taken for years. It appeared as though they put every medication available by prescription AND over the counter on the "do not mix with zoloft" list.  So, I relaxed. I did not commence "fingers down the throat" or "head to the ER" mode. I just went to bed. But my brain continued to worry about the possibility of dying in my sleep so I woke up about every two hours, ALL NIGHT LONG. Thanks Dream Water!

What I realized, though, was that as much as I hurt and often wish to be relieved of the pain and work of grief, I don't want to die. I'm not ready to go. Even the thought of being with Dave again isn't enough to give me a real death wish of any kind.

There are times when I see young families and think that maybe my chance for that is over and was taken from me the day Dave breathed his last. There are times when I wish for an end to my pain. But not once have I actually wished to die.

I want to live. I want to feel true joy and happiness again.  I know deep down that I deserve it.

At the very least, I have now recorded these thoughts I'm able to have on a "good day" and can remind myself that I've felt this way, this hopeful, and that I can feel it again. I can access that emotion again. Maybe on a bad day I won't be receptive to this feeling, but it's there. It's filed away for later. The terrible, black days always have a light at the end of them.

Knowing that is sometimes the only way through the days when hauling myself out of bed feels impossible.

*This is not an ad for Dream Water. It would be a pretty crappy ad, if so. 

Anxiety

I have always been highly strung.
I give the impression of being laid back, but I'm like the proveribial swan, paddling furiously under the surface.

When I first studied at university, I made sure I got first class honours and a scholarship to finish my PhD.
When I went back to do my Diploma of Education the year before Greg died, I went a step further, getting straight 7s (highest score) and graduating with high distinction at the very top of my class, winning the prize for my year (which turned out to be a fancy dinner and a certificate). 
It wasn't that I was driven to succeed, it was that I was anxious that anything less than my best would spell failure.

....and that was what I was like when Greg was ALIVE and using his calming, grounding influence to keep me from shooting through the roof at every little thing that even mildly rocked my plan for world domination world.

Now, I find myself unable to calm down when things become a little stressful.  
There is no voice of reason there to remind me that nobody is going to spontaneously combust unless I run around like a chook with its head cut off to hose out the myriad of little and big fires in my life.

I am currently stressed .... my job is under threat.  It's a long story that involves a new government cutting jobs which will result in those eager young beavers on contracts (like me) being pushed aside as the old guard who have been working in policy for the past few years, dust off their rusty skills to return to the classroom, pushing us out in their wake.

I've been quite anxious about how I will support us next year (when my contract ends).

I've been quite shouty and didn't I sleep for two nights:  I get more shouty when I am tired.

To put it mildly, I've been barrels of fun to be around....

I am trying very hard to keep some perspective...... but it's been hard without my human security blanket here to calm me down.

Today, instead of flying into a rage or crying or rocking in the corner, I've tried to remind myself that possibly the worst thing to ever happen to me has already happened (Note to Universe - this is not a challenge to see if you can up the ante).

I have other options for work: we will not starve to death.

...and I've been spending as much time as I can outside: in the garden; walking through the bushland across the road from my house; strolling along the waterfront.

Trying to channel Greg's calming influence.....
Trying to hear his voice through the whir of my mind.

...and so far, I'm succeeding ..... it's ...... OK.

...and maybe that's all I can ask for just now.

The Text

from here

Flashbacks are terrible. Simply terrible. I hate them. And I certainly don't want to bring them on, and yet they remind me of those bruises I sometimes get that hurt to touch, but that I keep touching anyway. Can't help myself.

Thinking about the "dark day" is pain beyond words. And yet, my mind seems to want to play those memories across the backs of my eyes like a movie on repeat.

Some parts are lost to the segments of my brain dulled by shock, but other parts are crystal clear.

Sometimes I want to talk or write about the memories of that time regardless of how much it tears me apart. Sometimes I don't think I have the energy to.

All the time there are triggers. An ambulance shrieking past, a character dying in a movie, the sounds and sights of a hospital. 

The flashbacks don't surprise me as much as they used to and they don't seem to undo me quite as easily as they used to, but trauma has etched its patterns in my brain.

The other day, my childhood friend's husband texted me. When that text popped up, the previous text from June 4th, 2011 showed up too, right behind it. The last time her husband texted me was on the day Dave died. In fact, now that I look at the time stamp, it was about an hour after he died.

I don't remember ever seeing that text before.  It read "Cass, I don't know if or when you will read this but Stacey is on her way to be with you. Stay strong and know we are thinking about you and Dave."

When we knew that things were looking very bad for Dave, my local friends notified my long-distance friends. When Stacey found out, she booked a flight from Ohio to be with me, and her husband sent that text, not knowing that Dave had already slipped away. By the time she got to the airport, she'd gotten the news that Dave had died. 

Reading that text that seemed to travel right out of time, out of nowhere to my phone almost 11 months later, made everything around me to dim to a gray, silent blur. My ears rang and my mouth went dry. For a split second I forgot where and when I was.

And then, I was right back in that hospital, seeing him conscious for the last time. Then, the last time I would see him at all, lying unconscious in an impossibly bright exam room, his face swollen and  almost unrecognizable.

I remembered holding his wallet in my hands and knowing, regardless of the doctors' efforts, that he'd never use that wallet again. I remember curling up on that horrible waiting room couch, cradled by my friend, begging my other friend to pray for Dave, just in case I was wrong about my terrible premonition. Just in case there was anything we could do with our powerless little selves to save him.

(As I type this, my hands are shaking and my pulse is speeding up. It's hard to get enough air, but I'm so strangely compelled to continue.)

I remember the doctor's words. The words the last few hours had hinged on. The words I wished I could stop in midair and redirect, back into the man's mouth to be changed to "We have him stabilized and he's going to be okay". The words that brought my life to a screeching halt.

I remember. I remember too much. Even shock couldn't save me from remembering those nauseating moments.

It might help to press that bruise from time to time. It might help to purge occasionally. But, damn if it doesn't feel like I will fall apart at the seams to think of it.

If Dave had survived me, I'd want him to focus on the 15 years we had together and not the last 7 days of life. So, I don't dwell there too much, but on the other hand, maybe unearthing those memories helps to dull their edges just a little every time until their edges don't cut quite as easily.

A very bad day

Last week marked two years since I was widowed.

It was not a good week.....worse than I could have imagined. ....
I arrived at school on February 29 to the news that one of my tiny little students had lost her father in a car accident the night before.
Horrific.
I did not cope well.

So I hope you'll forgive the repost of my own blog entry for March 1 ..... a letter to my husband....



2 years.

Two whole years that simultaneously feel like two minutes and two centuries.

The fog and numbness have gone this time – it’s just pure loneliness and loss this year: I miss you so badly.
I took the day off work …. I got some raised eyebrows when I did this, but thankfully not from my boss. (He is an odd boss – simultaneously infuriating and marvellous).
Plus I needed it after yesterday…

I took the kids to visit your grave.  Finally.  They haven’t been since you were buried.  I haven’t been because I don’t think you are there…..

I didn’t expect the reaction they had.
H cried.
K was quiet.
They sang a song in the car on the way “Our Daddy died on the first of March.  It’s the first of march today”.
sob.

They brought some stones they had decorated and carefully placed them on your (our) headstone.
…and we put in a solar light with a dragonfly on it.
Then we left.

I feel completely wrung out.
Too much sadness around me.
....and missing you more than ever.

I long to lay my head on your chest and fall asleep in your arms.
...and feel safe again.
even if only for a minute.

We miss you.
We love you.
XA

Dreams

From here

I've been haunted by anxiety lately. Everything feels so unsettled right now. Someone extremely close to my heart is facing a scary health problem. I'm forging ahead in this new life, not knowing what I'm doing or where I'm going. The holidays are looming.

I wake up several times a night with a racing heart and mind. My thoughts immediately go to trying to control. By controlling my inner world, I guess, I'm controlling something. I can't control the outer world, so at least I can control my thoughts. But the thoughts are out of control and useless, anyway. They try to predict the future and change the past. Both completely fruitless and frustrating.

My dreams are fleeting and hard to remember upon waking. I remember some parts of a dream I had a few nights ago. Dave was alive again, but suddenly collapsed. We were in the middle of nowhere and I was running to find help, screaming for someone, anyone, to help me help him. I don't remember how the dream ended.

Last night, though, I dreamed of the ocean. Every time I dream of the ocean, it's a peaceful, happy dream. Every single time. This time, I was fully dressed but standing knee deep in some gorgeous tropical waters. The water felt so perfect and looked so inviting that as a wave pressed up against the side of me, I just let myself fall into the water and smiled with pleasure. The water enveloped me and I felt free of anxiety while I floated in the vast blueness of it.

I want to feel free of anxiety like I did in that dream. I want to feel that in my waking hours. I long to feel that way again.

The way it feels to be able to let go and relax fully. I don't think I've felt that in more than 6 months. Except in my dreams.