Progress

It's almost 11:00pm on a wonderful Sunday evening. Just wrapped up watching StarGate, the movie with the fam and now getting ready to snuggle down and fall asleep to (you guessed it!) StarGate SG-1. Hah!

As I sat there watching the movie, I wondered to myself if I would have the gutz to walk through the StarGate. Honestly, I'm not so sure if I would. Today we went to Armstrong Woods with the intent on hiking one of the trails. I haven't done this is over a year and honestly the thought about being out in nature, a good amount of distance from my home, was making me feel more than uncomfortable. When I mentioned to Jess that I'm not feeling much for going on a big hike, he let out a sigh of relief and said he wasn't up to it, either. Good, I thought, 'cause I wasn't sure how well I was going to handle it. So, to answer my question, if I were given the chance to walk through the StarGate today, I would not do it. Right now, my sense of adventure and discovery is clouded with the fog of my anxiety disorder. Best to wait for the fog to lift.

And it's not that these foggy days are taking over my life, infact I've experienced more sunny days than not. However, sometimes it's hard to "roll with the fog", so to speak. I'm still looking deep to try and figure out how I got this way. I've summed it up like this: according to all the pros on Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the onset of the anxiety began after a traumatic event that shook my emotional foundation; however, the stage was set, with a super high-stress lifestyle, including overloading myself with school work, extra activities and volunteer work, leaving little to no time for myself, and even my family. So my brain did what it had to, by shutting me down. Now, I still believe I made it worse when I started investing a "cure" in medications and started on those. I know, now, what I need to do to get better.

So how do I do that? Well, for the longest time, I had no hope because even though I was consistently exposing myself to anxious situations, I lacked a sensation of relief when I accomplished my goal. Lately, however, I've had tremendous progress, especially when I face my fear and go forward. Today was an exception, because I felt like I hadn't pushed myself because we did not go on the hike, so internally, I wouldn't allow myself the satisfaction of feeling accomplished. Yeah, I know. I'm working on it. But I do remember feeling better after we went to the DMV last week, and that was a HUGE amount of stress; it felt so good getting it done and over with, walking out of there intact, and moving on with my life. I've given myself permission to ask for help, ie. have Jesse come with me. I think, in a way, this is designed to bring us closer together, or some bullshit like that.

The point is now I've made so much progress that even my perfectionist-self cannot deny it. I still have my moments/days when I feel like it's the end of the world/I'm overloaded/overstimulated/never going to get better. But I have this great arsenal of tools at my disclosure. My recovery includes going to Al Anon meetings, seeing my counselor, expressing my feelings openly with those around me, eating right, exercising daily, enjoying something (ie going to the river, sewing, reading, etc.), spending quality time with my children, deep breathing, meditating, journaling, blogging, and when I can-exposing myself to anxiety-inducing situations. I'm on my way, and even in this moment of anxiety, I'm feeling awfully optimistic and empowered.

Reassurance

The daily struggles with anxiety can leave a person feeling heavy hearted and sometimes very hopeless. I struggle and battle and succeed and accept anxiety on a daily basis and have been for the past 10 months. There has not been one day in those 10 months that I haven't experienced anxiety, even for just a minute, and I've often thrown myself into the investigatory role, seeking the answers to "why?". Yesterday and today are no different. Anxiety existed, but it wasn't at the forefront of my day. I carried on as normally as I possibly could, completing my goals and tasks for the day. Then, like an animal run out into the road, it was there, and it startled me. The adrenaline continues to resonate, as it did last night and now into this morning.

And quite literally, an animal DID cross my path as I drove, and as I did before, I slammed on the brakes. The opossum stayed put in the middle of the road as my car drove over it, not touching it, sparing it from death. I stopped, dreading that I had killed another innocent animal, only to see it's dark shadow continue across the road. What strikes me as odd with this is I had described the anxiety hitting me as though an animal had suddenly crossed my path. Is this a message? Or just a chance occurrence? I don't know, and I'm tired of speculating.

So I wonder, what caused this animal to cross my path?? What caused anxiety to cross my path?? I think the answer is nothing, it just happens. What reassures me is that there IS no reason, now, because for so long I sought for an answers to only learn that the answer is EVERYTHING. Everything in my life has caused my anxiety to do what it is doing. Everything from over-committing myself to the fights with Jesse to how I ate to the traumas I experienced as a child. Everything is responsible, so now it's time to start the change. I've made efforts in the past, but as usual we gracefully fall back into place of habit and comfort.

My reassurance is I KNOW I won't stay like this forever, although it may be a long long time. I'm not one to just accept that it's my destiny to fear everything and be stuck, in fact most of my frustration comes from how impatient I am with my recovery (a good sign, no?). And while everyday DOES have two handles (faith and anxiety), I am keen to picking up my day by both handles. I have faith in the Universe that I am capable of getting through whatever get's thrown at me. I carry anxiety so it doesn't carry me.

So for today, on this gorgeous sunny, overwhelming-to-the-senses day, I'll take the anxiety as it comes and embrace it. I'll practice my tools for when it gets tough, and I'll still come out of this day alive and well, just like I have for the past 10 months.

Ache

I'm aching all over...in my heart, in my head, in my body....the aching is ongoing.

I feel like the lights have been turned out and I'm forced to crawl through a room of doors, looking for the right one out. I've opened door upon door only to find myself back in this dark room of doors. Now I'm sitting here in this room, wanting to give up and just sit in sorrow on the floor. I'm sitting in this room, I've stopped feeling my way for the exit...I've stopped.

What makes a person wake up feeling like this? What causes this anguish? Where's the relief? I've asked God over and over to shine some light in this dark room, but am I not looking? I don't understand.

My head is pounding....from stress, from anxiety, from holding back the tears. I have no desire to do anything. I'm scared.

Of what? There's nothing to fear but fear itself, and that is precisely what I fear. It's as though I'm experiencing EVERYTHING and it causes me to become very overwhelmed with life. Even the smallest task has become the most daunting; the list of responsibilities is endless and I have no desire to even start on it.

If I only could make a deal with God....

Jump

This morning, at 9:30am, a young man walked onto the bridge, jumped the fence, tied a rope to the grill-siding and jumped to his death. The rope snapped and his body plummeted into the Russian River. He walked into the midspan of the pedestrian bridge, gracefully hoisted himself over the fence and expertly tied the last knot of his life. It hadn't occurred to me that I was witnessing the last moments of somebody's life until a while later...but as I sat there watching these carefully executed steps, he laid, dead, on Johnson's Beach. (The picture is from last week when Jadzy and I went on a walk to town; I've always loved how the bridge casts its shadow on the lazy River below.)

I wanted to jump through the screen and stop him and scream, "How could you? Why our town? Why here? You're so young! And I know you belong to SOMEBODY! How could you do that to them?!" I half feel sad and half angry! A sort of personal violation, because not only am I deeply attached to this town, I'm also attached to THAT bridge! He jumped where Jesse and I said our vows on the day of our wedding. He splashed into the River of my childhood memories, and those of my children. He washed ashore on the beach where thousands upon thousands celebrate a moments worth of freedom. How could he desecrate these sacred things for us?

...but then...I thought again.

Although I never met him, I've heard much about him. Dasa, my brother-in-law and in spirit, took the same plunge from a bridge in Portland, Or. Did any of these thoughts cross his mind? He wasn't in his right mind at all, so probably yes but the need to do it far outweighed the effects it would have on those around him. Those like his family who would never see him or hear him again...and those in his family he would never meet. Or even the woman who came to work that day, to glance out her office window and discover his lifeless body dangling from the bridge. What came into HER mind? Was she consoled, too?

Today, I feel like that woman...if ONLY I had been there 1 hour earlier, maybe I could have stopped him? Really, who knows why? I can honestly say, in my experience, that it was a mere thread that kept me from taking that same leap....those two little threads have kept me sane most my life: my children.

Dasa didn't have children, and I'm assuming this John Doe didn't, either.

So now what? Do I move on with my plans for the day? Or do I sit here and wallow in the sadness that surrounds me? Is it in their honor that I move on or is a disgrace? There's really no manual on how to deal with this kind of thing, not only in how to move on but also in honor of the dead. I'd rather not move on with my day as though nothing happened, but I also can't stop life from happening. Somewhere, a mother or father or brother or sister is getting a call that their loved one is dead, and I'm sitting here wondering how to go about the rest of my day because of it.

This evening, my family and I will be on the bridge to bid him a proper farewell. This cleansing of the bridge will help me to move beyond this tragedy, but also will help him move onto where he wants to be. He obviously did it for a reason, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he made the right choice.

Inspired

I'm so full of inspiration, I can hardly write, so I'll do the next best thing: make lists.

What do THESE things have in common?

pottery

art

prints

photography

color

sex

food

chocolate

writing

poetry

peace

walking barefoot for life

hope

ambition

blogs

dance

music

sing

laugh

talk

tell stories

converse about nothing

Alan Alda

popcorn

These are a few of my favorite things.....that I want to do or do to them the things that I want to do. Confused? Well, I don't necessarily want to "do" Alan Alda (course, if I could swing back to the 70s, that's a WHOLE other story), but a think I'd like to do with Alan Alda that is on my list would be "converse about nothing" with, or "laugh" with.....Jesus, did I really have to explain that? Ok....yeah, I'd do him, big deal! The moral of the story is, I'm SO inspired by the swirl of energy and art and beauty and tragedy and conflict around me, all these things on my list are exactly what I want to do and/or feel simultaneously at this very moment. How can I do that?

Well, I can start by putting M*A*S*H on the tube, that would take care of the Alan Alda/laugh part....but the rest? Yikes....I've given myself a long laundry list of "To-Do's" that could fill a lifetime! Or maybe it's more like a grocery list? A laundry list would imply I've already got it but it needs a serious cleansing, where as a grocery list suggests that I DON'T have it and need to get out there and get it....nah. It's a laundry list, maybe 'cept for the chocolate and food part....

So, look forward soon to a new blog by me documenting the progress of one of my favorite passions, my hometown, Guerneville. What better way to be a budding Historian than to document the goings-on of today?

Mourning

I am filled right now with rage and sadness, because today we learned that the awesome and most beloved Macho Man Randy Savage was killed this morning in a car accident. For Jesse, the loss is extravagant; his childhood hero taken by some cosmic force that felt it necessary that the world no longer needs folk of his kind. For me, I sit here mourning my husband who mourns his hero, because for the first time in WEEKS he woke with a smile and was happy. For the first time in weeks, his life didn't seem like a dead end, a constant cycle of monotonous everyday routine mixed with issues of being sober and deep, dark thoughts. No, today was supposed to be different. We were getting back on track...and then this.

I felt uneasy this morning, for no apparent reason. I felt like there was something looming, but rarely do I actually associate it with some catastrophe in the making. No, I generally assume it's just that part of my brain that's learned to work in overdrive, so I go through the motions of calming myself down. I got up and made some breakfast after a little snuggling with my happy husband. I sat at the table with Jadzy and ate breakfast while reading the slew of updated statuses on Facebook...and there it was. An old friend, living in Florida, posted: "RIP Randy savage." Holy. Shit. What? At first I thought she must have a friend named Randy Savage, 'cause there's no way Macho Man is dead. I did what any panicked, computer nerd would do in a situation of uncertainty: I turned to Google. Googled "Macho Man" and came up with a Wikipedia that had beginning and end years and for some reason it registered in my brain that he had died a while ago. After about two minutes of that, I realized just how WRONG I was, 'cause I remember reading an article about him and his new wife about a year ago. HOLY. SHIT! Back to google I go with the refined "Randy Savage" and there it was. DIED. May 20th, 2011. From a car accident. Holy FUCK!

"What the fuck do I do now?!" is what instantly went through my mind. Selfishly, I didn't want to tell Jesse...I wanted to keep this happy husband HAPPY, and I wanted to keep with the warm fuzzy feelings...and I knew that one word of this wouldn't make any of that possible. WHY? Jesus, God, whoeverthefuckyouare, why?!

I'm furious, to the point of tears. I hold my sobbing husband in my arms and all I can do is sob too, for HIM; mourning HIM because the happy, healthy, warm and fuzzy HIM is now GONE thanks to some great divine design to "off" his childhood hero. We are WELL beyond the point of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" because we have been dealing, coping and living with a constant barrage of disasters, one after another. Don't we deserve a FULL 24 HOURS to be happy?! Just 24 hours of him smiling and me not feeling like I'm going to go insane...is that REALLY so much to ask for? Well, apparently so.

And now, across the world, the generations of Wrestling fans are in mourning, and my husband, my mother-in-law and my son are part of them. The World of Wrestling and Entertainment lost a pinnacle character today, and I hope like hell the McMahon family doesn't tarnish him like they did with Chris Benoit (another devastating loss to the Wrestling World and Jesse). I hope Macho Man's family can sustain this loss just as I hope MINE can, because this is certainly the last thing we ever needed.

Mama

Just wanted to record for today some of the precious discoveries I found last night in my retrieved files.

I love this photo of me and Jadzy; one of the few things I miss dearly about having babies is nursing. She spent 20 months of her life in this position (this was taken not too long before I finally weaned her).

I love this one of that little monster boy of mine. Taken on the ped. bridge. I love how the winter light lit up his little white face.

Little monkeys. Atreyu as a baby monkey.

Jadzy in the swing.

Precious moments in time that I'll never get back, and if it weren't for pictures, I'd have lost them entirely.