Tag: Anxiety

A Dance with Darkness

The invisible lines between the various parts of my life woke up blurry today. I am far from a master at it but I’ve done this tight-rope dance before. A few days back, after a vallant attempt to combat my tendancy for winter isolation, uncomfortable thoughts and emotions started to creep up on me. I could feel it, as I had counteless times before, first in the pit of my stomach.

Emotions that could be called “vulnerable” ones, such as sadness, anxiety or fear aren’t anyone’s favorite jam. Historically for me, they have been cause for the development of an emergency escape plan. Not only did everything in me scream “run,” when I felt pain, it was most important to get away before anyone saw me in a state of what I viewed as personal weakness. It felt much safer for me to retreat to the solitude of my own darkness, often not treating myself very kindly on said-“retreat.”

In the darkness of my own thoughts and emotions, no one can see me trembling from the inside. My stomach churns, my teeth grind and my head often aches as I take cover from the thoughts that take up space in my brain:

To do lists a mile long that have not been started, adolescent sons, missing brothers, ailing loved-ones, college credits, fear of failure, hope for the future-woah, I still have not begun that to-do list.

It is not long before I have crossed so many lines in my head that I am not sure where to begin with untangling them. When I try to picture the boundaries of these lines in my mind, they represent a ball of yarn that a kitten has had free access to until nap time. By that time, I drop down into “real-life” (the present) for a moment and realize I should probably be doing something productive (full-time college while parenting is no joke) but which priority in my web of worries do I attempt to tackle?

Damn, I feel like I’ve BEEN tackled at this point. My head aches from the teeth-grinding and my stomach doesn’t know if it is hungry or needs to purge. Alas, there is no time to worry about such trivial symptoms, I am STRONG and I have that to-do list bellowing at me to stop being so…vulnerable.

Lessons in Gratitude From a Cardinal

How do I stay positive after repeated hits from life? Throughout the past several years; or should I say, through brain surgery, the loss of my best friend of twenty years and the recent loss of my brother, many close to me have asked a similar question. Others simply make statements regarding my strength and tenacity.

You have to know, these claims about who I am are part of why I write. We all have many versions of ourselves on rotation. Some versions get shared with the world, others get kept in the more private parts of our day. We often cope with the “darker self” in solitude. I suppose different people do this for their own reasons, but it started to weigh on me when people started to view me as “the strongest person they knew.” Was I only showing the world my successes and not the challenges that deserved just as much credit for my achievements? Viewing it that way made me feel like a fraud of sorts. I didn’t want to give others who were struggling to get Up Off the Mat the wrong idea about the grit it took to get myself up again after each fall.

Just this morning I was feeling low. Weekends, when things slow down, tend to be tougher on me in the way of memories and those I miss. Also, someone I love is very ill and that has been heavy on my heart. The weight of racing thoughts became heavy and anxiety set in. I craved a good cry but the tears would not release and sat heavy in my throat instead. I thought, as I often do, of calling a friend. After three years of tragedy, talking it out seems a futile effort at times.

Instead I put on some music, which has long been of comfort to me in times of anxiety. The tune wasn’t right, I couldn’t find a Pandora station that matched what was on my heart. Frustrated, I stepped outside into the morning air for a breather.

Right away I saw him. First I noticed his rusty-red feathers, then his fire red beak. The beautiful male cardinal jumped from one branch to another while looking right at me and chirped the most beautiful sound. I said a quiet hello to him and he chirped again. I felt the weight that had been on my heart lift. Instinctively, my hand went to my heart, my gaze still following the cardinal. Love filled my heart as I silently thanked him for coming back to visit after such a long absence. I took several more deep breaths of gratitude before he flew away and I went back inside, my energy successfully changed from anxiety, to hope.

As I fixed my next cup of coffee, I remembered something a friend told me once. She told me it was impossible to feel anxiety when you were experiencing gratitude. I took that message to heart at the time and have carried it with me ever since. It is not that I am incredibly strong or an exceptionally positive person. What I have learned is that life will knock you down to the mat repeatedly and without warning. It even attempt to pin you to that mat until you are sure you are done for. A lesson that has penetrated even deeper for me is that there are countless reasons to get Up Off the Mat, and a beautiful cardinal in the morning is as good a reason as any.