Anxiety

I am guessing I always had some anxiety.  I grew up in an environment where there was cause to feel anxiety and I internalized a lot of the adult stress in the house.  But I don't remember feeling like I couldn't take a full breath.  That, accompanied with a feeling of tightness in my chest and stress in my body is the most obvious way that anxiety presents itself now.  It started after I began my current career, about ten years ago.  I began to work a lot, I was happy, but I was also trying to manage a lot of things in my life.  It was years before I found out that it was a classic sign of anxiety.  

The root of why anxiety has become a part of my life is not really primary to me.  Maybe it was nature, maybe it was nurture.  Who cares, at a certain point.  I have it and both nature and nurture would have predicted it, so it's not worth further analysis than that.  What is worth analysis is that it didn't used to affect my life the way it does now.  The most major change was taking on a significant amount more responsibility, losing structure and routine and taking on financial pressures that were new to me.  I began making more money, but also making investments that added risk into the fold.  Previous to that, I had nothing, but I owed nothing.  I saved up for things I wanted and didn't spend when I couldn't afford to.  My life was simple.  I worked low pressure jobs.  I travelled. I didn't need more than a backpack full of clothes, a journal and walkman to be happy.  I rented a basement apartment for $192/mth.  I spent my time with friends, strangers, myself.  I had healthy distance from my family.  I read a lot, I wrote a lot, I played music. 

Fast forward to today.  I make more money than I could have imagined back then and have way more difficulty budgeting.  I have a stressful career that requires that my phone be on all the time.  I have such a fractured relationship with my parents that we are estranged.  I am a single mother 5 days a week with no family support.  I am a landlord, I am a wife, I am the head of our household.  I try to take breaks to re-coup, but often don't feel refreshed. Today I lied down for a bit because I was exhausted, but all I felt was stressed in a horizontal instead of vertical position.  I am wound so tightly.  

This is the beginning of truly acknowledging this, at least to this extent.  I have taken on more than I can handle.  I need to slow down.  I don't mean work less hours, I have already done this, and it has helped but not enough. I need less financial pressure and I need less responsibility.  I need to let go of trying to have it all.  It is costing me too much.

This realization comes at the end of a 30 day food cleanse.  Only clean eating for one month.  I didn't get the lowered anxiety and super boosted moods so many people rave about.  I improved my eating habits a few months ago and did see an increase in energy and happiness, but happiness is not the issue.  Anxiety is the issue.  And while the anxiety has been much better since my parents have left me alone, and with changes in diet in exercise, it still comes.  Less often, but when it grips me, it is so uncomfortable.  Having it less often is making it even more uncomfortable when it rears its head.  I am getting tastes of freedom from it and I want more.. 

I would like to see it continue to dissipate.  I believe that it can.  I didn't always experience it this way.  I need to create my own map, back to when it was less intense.

I need to simplify my life. 

What do I want?  I am going to think on that for the next little while.  The first thing that comes to mind is planting a garden.  Having more time and energy for Ivy.  Having my husband home more.  Spending time at the lake.  

I'll be honest, my mind quickly built a screened addition on our house, which would not go under the category of simplifying.  Ugh.  Okay, working on it (my brain erases the blueprints and blows the eraser dust onto the patio where the addition will not be going).

Calm Waters

It has been quiet.  The longer I am able to roam through my life free of my family, the more peace I am finding.  That is a sad sentence but also a liberating one.  I couldn't have said it last year.  I have healed a lot.  I have gained perspective I have never had.  I am finally getting strong again.

I reflect back on my years in their home a lot lately.  I struggled with depression in those days.  I didn't ever really realize how much it all affected me, I thought I was at fault for any of my shortcomings or struggles, despite being just a kid.  I was ashamed of my shortcomings, I was ashamed to be less beautiful than my cousins, I was ashamed that my dad drank, I was ashamed that our house was filled with so much secret darkness.  I felt like I deserved the darkness our house was cloaked in.  I found it difficult to enjoy happy moments without a sobering knowing that those were just moments, that I didn't actually have a happy life.

I remember in my late teens and into my twenties when I began to break away and find myself.  There was a point to it all.  The point was that moment when your heart is so full of peace and happiness, when there is music playing that resonates perfectly with what is inside of you.  When you're getting soaked by the rain and it is making you feel so completely alive.  Life was about those moments.  An early morning on a day where the sky looks like the colour of a stormy sea and you have a coffee in your hand and your heart is healing from something, that first taste of comfort after a painful time.  Knowing you are okay.  Sitting around a bonfire and being a part of instruments and voices and drum beats.  A train rolling down the tracks, taking you away, on your own to discover the world.  The sweetness of a sad goodbye.  It's in all of those things.  And all those other moments that are not so magical are just a part of life.  They are not what you live for, they are what you live through. 

I remember being in one of those happy moments and wondering if it was enough because I knew it was fleeting.  I had had those thoughts so many times.  Happiness being squashed by remembering how fleeting it was.  But then one day, I realized that it was enough.  I remember seeing the shadows of trees dancing on the sunny sidewalk as I walked down Sherbrook Street and realizing that the beauty in that was enough.  As long as we can see it.  

And so, now as I settle back into my life, as I free myself from the shame of having left my family, I am able to see it again.  The beauty in the raindrops on the window and all of the little moments that bring peace to my heart.  I still struggle with it all, but I am able to breath in the beauty all around me and know that I will be okay.  

It also brings about a difference between my mom and I.  The good moments were never enough for her and my life was so wrapped up in her ups and downs that they really couldn't be enough for me either.  Feelings of 'what's the point' and 'never enough' were what I was brought up around.  It doesn't surprise me that I struggled so much with myself and with finding happiness in my younger years.  I finally have found empathy for myself in those years.  Living in that house was hard.  I could never feel confident that things were okay, that I could let my guard down and just enjoy life.  I didn't know what to do with myself so often, when she was so broken. I always thought that at least in a small part, that brokenness was a reflection of me.  And when I think back, I feel sad for not just her anymore, but for me too.  I don't feel shame or secrecy anymore.  I don't feel responsible for it anymore.    

I feel like last year, I dealt with a form of survivors guilt.  I had to leave people I loved in a burning building because I had a child in my arms and couldn't stay there any longer trying to convince them that the fire was real.  Saving yourself when it means leaving people you love in a painful place is hard to overcome.  To say the least.

I am so grateful for the distance between then and now.