A little while back I had a dream. I was late for work; my mom and come over to watch the kids. I ran out the door to find my car in the driveway with several huge dents and scrapes. I was so confused. I had not remembered getting into an accident the night before. My mom, always practical, immediately started popping out the dents and smoothing out the dings saying, “this is fine, you can still go to work.” The back passenger door was so damaged that it wouldn’t close all the way. I went around and cracked it open further to discover a family of cats had made their home in my backseat. Suddenly several little orange kittens started jumping out of my car. My sweet mama, standing behind me, started scooping up the cats without skipping a beat saying “this is fine, I’ll take care of the cats.”
Guys, let me tell you. The dream took no interpreting. This is a fairly accurate portrayl of the way my life had felt recently. I woke up and laughed at the hilarity of how my brain interpreted my current chaos, and then nervously went to the window to check my car… It seemed plausible that I may have wrecked on the way home the night before and not remembered.
Lately I’ve felt like I’m trying to drink from a firehose. I haven’t blogged recently because I’ve struggled with how to say “my life is on fire” without worrying people too much. In all seriousness, I’ve been dealing with a pretty intense bout of anxiety. I have overwhelming feelings that something bad is going to happen. I have physical symptoms that make me feel like I’m dying. I don’t sleep. I worry and fret and stress.
I want to be honest here and say that even though this blog has been filtered through the lens of Grant’s deployment, my anxiety did not start, and isn’t because he is gone. It certainly doesn’t help that he’s not here, but anxiety is something that I’ve always had. I think it would be easy to blame my husband being gone as the reason for my anxiety, but I know it won’t magically go away when he returns. It will creep back in stressful times. In the past, I haven’t been the greatest at identifying it, or frankly doing anything about it. This time around though, I’ve called it by its name. I’ve talked about it openly. I’ve sought professional help for it. In a way, I’m grateful he’s been away. It’s pushed me to rise to the occasion and be the best version of myself that I can be. I have to be healthy and present for the tiny humans that depend on me. I have to be.
It’s an incredibly humbling experience to go through this personally. Even though professionally I very often work with people with mental health disorders, living it is a whole other thing. I’m still in the thick of it. I definitely don’t have a handle on it as much as I’d like, but it feels good to be authentic about it. To anyone reading this and identifying with it at all, please know that you deserve to be the best version of you, too. Take action with your mental health just like you would your physical health.
Lastly, A quick shout out to my mama, who is always picking me up when I’m in pieces. Reassuring me both in real life and in my dreams, “this is fine, this is going to be fine.” Oh, and helping take care of my actual cats, and kids, and dog, and bird, and…
bugsyandboo 