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).