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.

A New Year

Last year finally ended.  I had forgotten that it could end.  It seemed like a long ball of twine, tangled and knotted.  Every now and then, I'd luck upon a small stretch that was not tangled, not knotted.  And then I'd hit a big ugly knot and I'd remember.  Oh, right.  It's still this..

But this year started out without a snag.  This year is not the year I spent begging my dad to leave me alone, defending my right to peace, defending my desire to not take it anymore.  This year is not the year where I put myself and those around me through turmoil trying to make peace with moving away to find peace.  

This is the year that I get to start making the rules.  This year, I woke up on New Year's Day and felt that familiar old feeling of a new year, new start.  The feeling I couldn't access last year.  I felt excited.  Free.  Happy.  

The stress isn't gone, it's just lurking a little less prominently.  I can see it in the way I am with my husband.  I am still being guarded, unable to give fully, unable to open up intimately.  It feels like that part of me lives inside of a much more carefree person that I have trouble accessing still.  First comes less stress, but I need to find a way to unwind more of it.  Heal more, find the space for some carefree with him.  

I am grateful for less stress.  For now, that is a huge win.  I just want to keep going.  Find more peace.  Accept more, worry less.  

The Sound of Silence

This morning I saw a cover of a song I have always known and never truly heard.  Until today.  It stopped me, sat me down and made me understand.  It told me about my mom's struggle, from a place of insight that my mom has no access to.  My heart broke for her.  From over here, instead of from inside of her darkness.

I heard it like she was singing, from a place where she is not ill.  She has never struck up an orchestra and let me into her pain, as a visitor like that.  She can't, as far as I can tell.  She has struck me with her pain in disordered attempts at sharing it, but there were no strings, no rich baritone, only emotional trauma.  She has punished me for her pain, and with it, but never taken my hand and shown me inside.  She has given it my name, among the others responsible.  I have never been able to see it entirely separate from me.  I live in it.  I find happiness despite it.  But it's always there.  It carries a weight with it that I can't describe.  I don't mean to sound like she didn't give me credit for her happiness too, she did.  The weight was just as much.

I have had some days, and even some weeks over the last year where I am able to walk away from her pain.  Most of the time, I can feel her pain, vibrating from my absence, so the distance was often only physical.  I could hear her words.  How could you do this to me.  You said you would take care of me.  You are breaking my heart.  After all we have done for you..  And then, every now and then, that tether would just release and I would be free.  Happy feelings without guilt for feeling them.  Lightness.  Peace.  These days, I have been free of that tether once again.  I have had this feeling before and then lost it, so I am not getting attached, but the freedom feels like such relief and I am soaking it in like sunshine.  It feels like I just put down something heavy that I had been carrying until my muscles were burning and shaking.  It feels like a warm spring day after a long, bitter winter.  I can breath again.

I have wanted to free her from her darkness my whole life, and even when I knew intellectually that I can't, my heart couldn't give it up.  Over the last year of trying to tell my heart it wasn't responsible for her, it couldn't stop.  It was involuntary.

And now as I hear it again, I realize it is me I am hearing singing.  It is the solitude I learned to understand life within that always divided us.  It is the difference between the darkness being a friend and a foe.  It is understanding the silence.  It is me freeing that tether and accepting that I can't make them understand. And accepting that I can't understand them either.  My desire to see my mother find peace is shifting from a mission to a wish.  Letting go has been hard.

"Fools" said I "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

- Paul Simon

Today it Feels Easier

I don't know if it's just the decision to stay, I know that has a lot to do with it.  But I think it's also comfort in the coming winter, a later bedtime for Ivy, making the days more do-able and the wake-ups not so painfully early.  It's knowing we get to work on our finances and get stronger.  It's a strong resolve to not eat out so much, save money, be in a position where we have more options.  It's hope that I can get some peace from my parents, that I can find a way to have them stop contacting me until I can build the strength to gate keep a limited relationship between them and us.  I love that moving is still possible down the road.  That we can give ourselves time to get our life into a less complicated place to move from if we do decide to go that route.  That we don't have to sort it all out right now.

And I love that we get to feel rooted somewhere again.  I feel so relieved.

To the end of indecision!

We have been planning on moving away.  Our decision was essentially made, but I was struggling with it so much.  I kept waffling.  I didn't understand why I had such a hard time to commit to either staying or going.  Neither felt good.  

So, we went to Nelson, which is where we planned to move.  The whole time we were there, we both agreed that we could live there.  It was beautiful.  It was laid-back.  It was everything I imagined and more.  So, we're doing it we decided. 

And then we came home.  We pulled up to our house and I felt such comfort.  I had a shower, looked out the window at our fire pit, the trees, the space around us and felt peace.  We drove out to the lake. The leaves are all gone from the trees and the lake view was incredible.  A mist over the lake made it look like an ocean.  It was so quiet and beautiful, I felt quiet and peaceful.  More peaceful than I had felt for our whole holiday.

I was up all night the second night out there.  I couldn't imagine another year of trepidation.  Another year of indecision.  I couldn't imagine selling our home and cottage until we had lived there and felt it was home.  

So we looked into options to move for a trial period, without selling anything here.  It was not do-able financially.  Not even close.  And then the decision was made.  Now is not the time.  There may be a time, but not now.  For now, our home is our home.  Our cottage is still our cottage and we can continue to form roots here.  I am so relieved.  I couldn't make the decision but when it was made for me, it was the right one.  I feel so in love with our life here.  I feel so grateful for the friends we have, for the business, for our home, our yard, our cottage.  I feel grateful for the view from our front window, for the trees and the space.  There is nothing like our neighbourhood in Nelson.  Nothing even close.  

Plus, we don't get bears in our yard.  Bonus.

Where Do I Start. Where Does It End.

Sometimes people let you down and then you realize that they were never put in your day for you.  They put you there for them.  And then you feel sick about it for a bit.  And then you move on.

So, bla bla bla bla.  Moving on.