Comments will be closed on this one. Not because I don’t love y’all to bits– but because this is just a journal documentation for me, of the 30 anxiety-ridden days I just overcame. I thought about making it private, but — when reading it back– I realized how much unintentional stuff helped me. Who knows? Maybe it might help someone else.
_____________________________________
September 12 – Daile asks, “R U Okay?” and two things strike me simultaneously. 1. She genuinely wants to know. 2. My answer is no.
It’s my day off, and I confess to Dave. The emotional volcano inside me is no longer dormant. I don’t reply to Daile, even though I try, because I’m not sure what to say. Instead, I write a letter to Glory, that I have no real intention of sending. I write emails to my besties, telling them that I’m slightly out of orbit and I’ll get back to them when I can.
I am bit by a commentor. Ouch! They ask for their comment to be taken down, so I remove it, but my blog feels like shark-infested waters. I hide.
September 13 - Duncan guest posts for me, after a late night tweet for help. He comes through, and I marvel in the idea that I didn’t doubt it for a minute. No matter what is happening in my life, I always seem to find my way to the sorts of people you can count on. I warn him that my readers have been biting lately and he says the day that a commentor stops him from writing is the day he hangs up his gunbelt. Cowboy up, I tell myself. Just like Duncan.
September 14 - Marilyn guest posts. I tell her she can write about anything, and in the face of a life changing surgery, she writes about love. I am equal parts inspired by her purpose, and ashamed for being so negative in the face of all the positivity my life possesses. Focus, I tell myself. Just like Marilyn.
September 16 - Rob guest posts. He tells me not to take life too seriously, so that night– I eat sugar-free ice cream straight out of the box. I tell Dave all about how Russell Brand responded to him– it shows how connected we all are in this world.
September 17 - My madness spills over into more apparent means. I start a few arguments in the ‘sphere by reprimanding people for behavior that smacks too much of bullying. My trodden heart can’t witness this without comment today. I am angry. I am sad. I am silenced. I am too loud. I am confused. I am just an imitation of myself. My husband guest posts about best faces. I ask him what my best face is, or should be– thinking in regards to life goals. He tells me my best face is my happy one, and holds my hand till I fall asleep.
September 19 – Sheena guest posts. It’s wonderful to think that she sees all those colors in me. I think of it like a third party review of the self that I am struggling to find. I test it, wearing the colors– yes. I would trust her judgment on anyone else, and I trust her in this. I am colorful! The project of discovery gives my mind a much needed break.
September 20 – Revis guest posts, and I hurt my stomach laughing for the first time in what feels like weeks.
September 21 – Rohan guest posts. In the process of choosing my favorite of his posts to link to, I re-read many. A few deep breaths and calming insights later, and I was rejuvenated enough to step out of my mental shell. The guest post hits home, too. My takeaway– is “Who is it really for?” — not just gifts, but everything. I ponder.
September 24 – Katie guest posts. The idea of a personal lullaby is comforting. I begin to play mine in my mind. Math, Louis Armstrong, tiny things, giant things, stuff that goes bump in the night… it is soothing.
September 25 – Steph guest posts. The changes she’s been facing in her life make me wonder if I’m struggling more with change than identity. Recent life experiences required me to recede into a shell for the last few years. The reason for the shell goes away soon, and I am panicked. I don’t even remember the woman who started an art gallery with $500 and a half-baked plan.
September 25 – Goldy posts about PTSD and I consider the possibility that all my mental drama stems from the incident. My baby sister’s birthday is the next day, and I queue up a post for her at the Storyboard. In my mind, I wonder what she would say to me– too afraid to actually ask. She would ask me what the plan is– or in her words, “Everyone spins in circles when they don’t know where they’re going”. My vision board is blank still. I’ll work on that, I think, and then talk to her.
September 26 - A funny feeling happens in my stomach, and I worryingly reach out to Kozo. We skype, and I tell him that I feel like I lost my way. I feel stifled by the things that shouldn’t be said. He reminds me that one of my gifts is seeing one side, or two sides, or thirty-two sides. Inevitably, one of those sides is not going to be the opinion that people want to hear. I wonder if it’s important enough to say, but it’s less about the issues and more about the restraint. Keeping silent makes me feel like a victim, or a liar. There’s no resolution to be found today, but I feel better. My niece says that Kozo reminds her of a super hero out of costume. I consider the possibility that we all are.
September 29 - Nostalgia hits me. It’s beautiful, suffocating, and frightful. Like this:
October 1 - I don’t mean to say anything about my mental disarray, but Matticus has the uncanny calm of Narnia’s Aslan. Predictably, I spill my guts– and predictably, he listens with serene equanimity. Maybe I’m right, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I should extinguish the fire in my insides. I am calm, for a bit, over fajitas and talk of dance. Then I see the big blue eyes of Baby E in a picture, and the big blue eyes of the Little Prince, and I remember that I burn with fire today to make a better tomorrow. They deserve a better tomorrow.
October 2 - I don’t post because I’m making a list of things I would like to have in my new, non-shelled life– and what I have to sacrifice for it. Example; I want respect in the fields where I am an expert. For this, I must sacrifice secrecy– I have to justify my expertise.
October 3 – Hyperbole and a Half releases a comic on exactly the day I need it, showing me that we are connected. I write a post about it so I don’t lose sight of that wonder.
October 4 - My post on God goes live. TJ drew a picture at the request of LeClown, and it’s another unsolicited perspective on me. I’ve been reading my memory over and over again since writing it. Remembering my first interaction with God is like stopping time. Perhaps nothing is being solved, but I like to think of it as time set aside to heal and love.
( I lost track of time here. Days off. Moments of happy, moments of tired. Trying to make a plan for life. Am I sad because I have anxiety? Or sad because of reason? Does my anxiety have to do with past trauma or is it my intuition heralding terrible things to come? Would change fix it? Is change needed? If I met myself right now, when I was just 15, would I be impressed by myself? Will I ever be able to write my true thoughts on the feminist movement? How should I cut my hair? Does this blog make me look fat, or in other words– I’ve come so far with it, so why do I still have more questions than answers? I think about anxiety/depression and how everyone has a different type. Imagine that real life is you in a room with two cages– one that contains an angry man-eating bear, and the other is full of your favorite flowers. When Dave is depressed, he’s uninterested in either cages. When I am anxious, I feel as if I’m hiding in the flower cage because the bear is not caged. I’m trapped. The bad is lose, but look– the flowers are shiny, too. Some people feel like there’s neither bears nor flowers in the room, and others feel as if only one is there. It’s complex.)
October 11 - A blog friend, or someone I thought was a blog friend, sent a tired email. She was pretty upset about my most recent Freshly Pressed status. She wrote a post about the bureaucracy of it all, and sent an email informing me that my blog successes were because I flaunted my body, lived a shallow life, lied, and bribed. She said I had no friends. Not really. I simply had people who wanted to ride the coattails of my manipulative search engine optimization. She wished me a lonely life and went along her way. My husband responded and she took down her post. My friends responded, too. That, and the previous 30 days, goes to show how wrong she is about that much, at least. It’s hard to explain to Dave. The email itself didn’t bother me. I’ve received hate mail before. It was the intimate knowledge of the trials of my past, and the word “phony”. I feel like a phony. Not for the reasons she stated, of course– all my stories are entirely true, but I’m used to people doubting. A Southern Baptist marries a Jain after a violent game of Monopoly, and have 6 children in the same order as the Brady Bunch who do the electric slide anytime someone mentions it? Puh lease. If I didn’t live it, I wouldn’t believe it either. But the life I live reeks of direction, and I haven’t any. I think of MommyVerbs, and action sentences. Move on. Put your chin up. Live with good intentions. Lets! Go! Do! That!
October 12 – I drive past a bumper sticker on my way to work. “R U Okay?” is asks. Yes, I think. Suddenly, for no reason at all– I am. I have a vision board again, filled with simple and big things alike. It appeared overnight. It could be all the connections that the universe made for me, or all the love sent my way without asking.
I’m happy that I solved it, through tiny bits of action and love every day,
but disappointed that I didn’t reach out more when the answer was no.