I Want to Succeed!

I’m not sure how I’m feeling this morning, is that weird? Have you ever just felt like you’re feelings are in a sort of limbo? I’m not sad nor happy but neither am I anxious or afraid. This might just be a blah day of sorts.

With all the tensions of trying to move, my anxiety had truly reared its’ head this past month. With a few trips to the doctor, I’m starting to get it under control. I’ve had to stop thinking of moving for a little bit in order to take care of myself but it’s not completely on the back burner. I want it more and more each day but I have to take a little bit and get to feeling better and know that I’m better.

I have an appointment for my cardiologist in a couple of weeks, I was just there the other day and he scheduled me for a test. It’s not a stress test but where they do a sonogram of sorts on your heart and for the life of me I can’t remember the correct name so I dare not say it for fear of putting the wrong name. He said it’s just precaution and that too will help to give my mind something to argue my panic attacks with. As long as insurance pays for it, I’m all in.

I had to let my mammogram appointment go because they were going to charge me. I have two benign tumors that were discovered about 18 years ago I want to say. I do truly forget what year they were found but I remember what I went through. Since then I’m supposed to have them monitored but with the changes in insurance, I haven’t been able to afford what they charge for it. It’s not a normal mammogram, they call it diagnostic so that makes it cost more. I’ll just have to wait and see if I can afford it at another time or if the insurance decides to pay for it.

With all of this health thing being taken care of in order to help me with my attacks, I’ve decided to try and get some walking in. I can’t walk in our neighborhood but I do have an old treadmill in the back room. I put an old tv up on a stand so I can see it and I’m going to try and get some walking in. I haven’t started it up yet but I’m hoping it still works. So far my two cats are excited over the commotion and being allowed in the back room that I use for storage. It’s weird but that room seems to calm me down, that’s weird, right? It used to be used for bedrooms and a dining room when I was growing up. My father had put up a partition wall to make it into two rooms so one was a bedroom for years and when I was old enough (years after he passed), I too used it as a bedroom. I remember at one point using it as my bedroom and the other half as my living room. So now, it just has a calming effect on me and it’s just weird to me that it does that.

I have some more moving around to do before it’s ready but hopefully by tomorrow after work, it will be ready to use. I have high hopes but am nervous about it too. How does someone do these things all by themselves? Do they do it alone so that if they stop then it’s only them that knows? I don’t want to be that person, I want to succeed. Do you hear me Universe? I want to succeed!

Smells

I awoke last night at 1 am to a very strong smell of coffee. Thinking it was time to get up, I reached for my phone to turn off the alarm and that’s when I could see the real time. Thinking that the coffee pot was on the fritz due to a power outage last week, I pulled the covers back over me and tried to go back to sleep.

Every half hour or so, my eyes would open with a feeling again of the coffee needing my attention. No smell of smoke, no fear in my mind but just the strong smell in my room. I did set the coffee to start for the next morning as I normally do but this has never happened before. Was I being told that I just needed to get up, what was going on?

Whether it was just being very tired or laziness, I decided each time not to get out of bed and to try and push through in order to get some sleep. Finally, 5 am came around, I normally get up at 5:30 am so I gave in and got up. Keeping to my morning ritual, I walked out of the restroom again to smell the coffee. By this time I truly thought that the coffee pot would have hit it’s two-hour timer and turned itself off.

Turning the light on in the kitchen, I hear the familiar drip and hiss sound of the coffee pot, it was just starting to brew! There wasn’t yet the strong smell of coffee in the room as it was in my bedroom last night. This was beyond strange because I truly expected to see a full pot of cold coffee waiting for me to heat back up this morning.

Sometimes I can sit in my bedroom and smell smoke, like a cigarette. No one in my house smokes and a smoker hasn’t lived here since my father who passed in 1976. So it’s strange how smells can take over a moment and well, a night if I’m counting the hours of last night. But why coffee and why so strong that it wakes me up? Was I supposed to get up and just didn’t do it? I’m worried to find what I missed from not heeding its warning.

Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary and I actually fell asleep in the living room for 15 minutes after setting my fresh cup of coffee down. Thank goodness I didn’t sleep for longer or I would have been late for work. However, I do wish I had the day off, my desk sits beside my bed at the moment and the covers look so inviting. But the window is open and the sun is rising. Birds are chirping and happy that we filled the feeder. It’s so chipper outside I’m wondering when Mary Poppins is going to fly by! Seriously, it’s a beautiful morning and I’m having to watch it from my window, albeit better than not watching it so I am thankful. Thankful yet tired today, hopefully, that will pass just as the strong smell of coffee did and the day will continue to be beautiful.

Walking Shoes

I live in a part of the world that is very fickle when it comes to winter. It can sometimes have a bit of an undecided temperament. One day you can be wearing shorts and feeling great and then suddenly overnight will bring freezing weather the next day. All of this going back and forth seems to bring on the cold and flu season but also plays havoc with my allergies!

As I sit here typing, my nose is slowly draining a pond in my head and although I’m alone, I’m truly tempted to put a tissue in there and leave it. I haven’t done that so here goes the timer for how long it takes my sniffling to wake the house up.

The sun is teasing me through the window and I’m not sure if it’s going to be a good day or a rainy one. Please don’t get me started on my allergies when the rain comes in! Sometimes it’s good and clears it up but then sometimes I sneeze just because it’s raining….really?

Hopefully, the sun will be warm today and help my bones to stop aching as it does in the cold. Even though it’s a work day, the birds outside my window don’t know that, nor do the squirrels. Watching them play and feed seems to take some of the agonies of allergies away. I’m hoping that the next couple of days stay warm as I have them off from work. We’re planning on going to a hotel so that we can actually be outside and not have to worry too much, a lot less than where we live.

It’s going to be a lot of walking but that will make up for the time I work and sit. Visiting with one of my sisters and her husband will also be nice as we’ve gotten closer over the last few years. It will be a lot physically but I still think relaxing. She’s been through a lot also so I think that’s why we’ve bonded more than some of my other siblings. I still love everyone but we just seem to understand each other a little more. She’s helped me through some rough emotional times and I hope that I’ve been there for her too.

So, I raise my coffee cup in a toast of hope to good sunshine, great conversation, family and comfy walking shoes!

Damp Towel

Drink an entire pot of full caffeine coffee, place a damp towel that is just thin enough for you to be in the dark but yet see what is going on around you. This is as close as I can get to describing my panic attacks. It is much worse in my head, as when it’s happening, to me, my world is ending. Sometimes it’s a feeling of ending health and other times it’s just a severely strong feeling of doom. There are no triggers as people say “avoid your triggers”.  If I knew what they were then I wouldn’t still be having attacks.

Stress can be a factor, but who doesn’t have stress? Even during times of relaxation, I can find myself feeling an attack coming on or not feel the warning sign and it hits. Sometimes I don’t get a warning sign and it comes on so fast that I have to leave wherever I am if I’m not at home. This could be why I don’t tend to go many places like others do. Yes, I have a lot of responsibilities that keep me home but don’t others and they still have that time to take a long weekend or a three-day cruise. What would that be like? To be able to go somewhere and not worry about what you left behind.

The last long trip I can think of that I went on was back in 2006 when we drove to my mothers’ hometown to lay her to rest. We took about a week and this was before my granddaughter came home. My nephew was 16 at the time and we didn’t have the cats yet so we were able to do this. Honestly, it was something I needed to do and didn’t think much of the house when we left although we have truly wonderful neighbors next door and they said they would watch the house for us. I had the chance to show my nephew and my brother, the places that my mother had shown me when we took a trip there about 10 years earlier. Some places she had only told me about when she talked about growing up so the adventure to find these places was extremely memorable. We rented a huge van with plenty of seats but when driving straight through for 16 hours, there’s going to be some squirming and getting on each other’s nerves. It was fun in the long run and sad also. But I was able to do what I knew needed to be done and that was to bring her home and lay her next to her mother.

My panic attacks didn’t actually start until almost 5 years later. I found myself working in my job at the time and just started to feel weird. I don’t know how to describe it but maybe I can say it was like the feeling you when you step into the cold water and a kind of electric chill passes through your body all the way up to your head. I remember sitting at my desk and a fear came over me. I told my boss I needed to walk around for a minute, thinking it would pass but it didn’t. When I realized it wasn’t going away, I told my boss that I needed to go to the hospital because something was wrong. They never offered to help, they just said okay and let me drive myself to the hospital.

I was completely terrified by the time I reached the hospital. When they took me to the room in the back, I broke down into heart-pounding sobs. They took tests as I couldn’t describe much but knew I felt it in my chest area. So they were thinking heart attack, but after all the tests, they had no signs showing of that. This was when I was told I had a panic attack all while doing my ugly cry in the emergency room. They kept me overnight just to make sure but of course that adds to more stress, especially when the other person in the room has to use the bathroom multiple times during the night. But this was just the beginning.

After being in the hospital I followed up with my doctor, as every good patient should do. He suggested therapy, boy was that something. I had never been to anything like that and on the very first day of me trying it, I cried my entire way home. I cried so much during this time, I think I dropped 5 pounds just from tears! Insurance only covered 8 sessions so it was short but it was okay. They said that I never actually grieved the passing of my mother and honestly I don’t know that I ever have, even now.

So I learn to live with my attacks and how to deal with them, sometimes I feel them coming and other times they surprise me. One day I will probably learn how to grieve but I don’t know how someone goes about doing that. What I can say is that it constricts you and changes you into someone that you weren’t before. It’s like being held hostage in your own body and mind. You see others doing things that you want to do but you fear that you can’t do it or your mind tells you that you’re not healthy enough due to the attacks. It’s an evil game it plays on you, one side of your mind is positive while the other is very negative. Sometimes one is more powerful than the other and it’s a struggle to keep positive in control.

One day at a time, some days are hour by hour and minute by minute with ups and downs. But I don’t have the luxury of being allowed to stay in bed during those times and that’s a good thing. I’m not allowed to give into the fear because I know that the bills will not get paid and my family will not survive. I feel like a walking, talking panic fuse just waiting to go off at any moment.

I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this, I guess just trying to see if I write it down and share it with someone that doesn’t know me in person, if that might help a little. There is still hope no matter how bad the day is I can still dream and I do. So with this, I hope it helps and I can work on making those dreams come true without fear.

 

Trickle to a Roar

There are so many emotions that our minds are capable of reflecting upon us. One minute we can be experiencing the greatest moment of our life up to that point. The next moment it all comes crashing down to feel like our lowest moment ever.

I’ve read before where we are in control of our emotions, but if they’re not supposed to be shown or felt, then why do we have them? Would we be stifling an important part of being human if we changed the way we think just to make us feel better? Doesn’t emotion sometimes help us grow and become stronger at times?

The euphoria of the good emotions are addictive so that when the depression of the lows are introduced, we shun them. Could the lows be telling us it’s time to change what we’re doing or where we are or whatever is happening in life at the moment? How would someone in an abusive relationship know it’s wrong if all they felt were the good emotions? And how would someone who won the lottery ever know when they are taking the wrong step in spending if their “gut feeling” wasn’t there?

It’s a flip of the coin for me actually, I do love the good feelings and lately, I’ve had my share of the bad ones. Being ready for something good to happen is an understatement for me lately. However, I know that when something good does happen, no matter how small, it will mean something to me because I would treasure the feeling that I’ve missed. Experiencing the bad feelings makes me miss feeling good again and it is what I’m striving for. The road to getting there though, everyone seems to have a different map.

So then, with everyone having a different way of finding their happiness, where does one start? Maybe with the little things, I like watching birds out my window for instance. I like seeing the first sunlight come across the drapes in the living room. These things give me moments of the “feel good” that I’m looking for. But I don’t know if I can live on just a trickle of the good emotion, so how can I make it more and more often?

It’s a journey I guess, one of self-discovery and learning what makes me happy. I’ve always made others happy so I don’t know truly what makes me happy. Who knows where it will lead me to but I’m willing to try. What’s the worst that can happen? I stay feeling down, well I’m already there so okay.

Let’s see what happens.

Sometimes I Forget

Have you ever been at a red light just waiting for it to turn green and then for one brief moment, you forget where you’re going? Why did your brain forget that you have to get groceries or pick the kids up? Is it something to worry about or be happy about because, in that brief moment, the stress of running around was gone?

The mind is a fickle thing, it can bring you happiness or relief during the hardest of times all by shutting down for a moment. But ask yourself, where does it go or even, where does it take you? And why can it also do the opposite, have you panic in the calmest of situations? Such amazing powers that we as humans cannot seem to control most of the time.

Saying that the mind is so powerful just makes me think of something silly. Have you ever watched an alien movie where there is a big alien that is suddenly defeated and then his head opens to show you the little alien actually running the show? Subliminal or just a silly movie plot, I don’t know, but it sure seems to fit this way of thinking. If our minds are truly separate of our bodies then what other things can it do and why?

Are we able to control what is fed to our brains and if so how do we do it and is it our brain telling us to do this? Are we two selves, the body and the mind? Making them talk to each other I think is a good thing but when the mind decides to either shut the body down or send it into an uncontrollable water bath of tears, I have to wonder it’s motive.

Is our brain trying to communicate with our body by making it do these things? If so, why can’t it just use the same tactics that it does when it tells us to eat the other piece of pizza and then a chocolate shake? It doesn’t seem to have such a hard time with getting us to do things that are not good for the body. So another thought, sibling rivalry? Could that be why we don’t seem to figure things out until we’re older?

The mind and the body are growing just as we are so could they be going from infant to adult in the same way we do on the outside with our siblings or peers? If the brain bullies the body, does it retaliate and how. Is this where headaches really come from or when you get a pain in your body and then it suddenly goes away? I know, there are scientific explanations for all of this but just let your thoughts go a different way, if only for this moment. Let the simplicity of the idea outweigh the science and remember the times when you were a kid and this was how some parents explained things to you. I know my child ran into the coffee table, but why do I tell my child “bad table” just to calm him down? So now does he think the coffee table is alive and has it out for him? We do the same for bruises and cuts and even hurt feelings. How many times have you heard that as a girl, if a boy pulls your hair, it means he likes you?

Thinking back now, even the silliest of things that were told to me brings a smile to my face. Have my mind and body decided to start acting like grown-ups for this moment and allowed me to have that moment of peace? I like to think this and in that moment when I realize that I just drove 5 miles and have no memory of it, I know that my brain was driving while my body relaxed. Scary as that sounds, I’ll take it.