Doing what I Do
I think the medicine is working.
I do still have my moments. Moments meaning I tear up unexpectedly or I feel the sense of urgency and anxiety of a panic attack which starts with my teeth chatter moving toward my toes. This form of movement, the teeth chatter is not controllable unless I clinch my mouth shut therefore causing it, the anxiety to move to my fingers or toes causing my pulse rate to skyrocket.
I have been told by the professionals to just “go” with it, let it happen, it will subside. I have also been told by other professionals to try and distract yourself, get your mind thinking of different things, to which I quickly told it ain’t that easy. Most of the time I can feel it coming toward me, engulfing the mind, it is all in the mind you know. It is a thought or a feeling revisited sometimes unaware sometimes not. It will creep up on you or it just hits you like a Mack truck running 70mph in a 50zone. Most of the time I can't get away from it.
I have pills. Little blue ones that stay close by my side at all times. I am not a willy-nilly pill taker for all that ails me. I resist until there is no where else to go and I don’t have the strength to climb the wall I just ran into. Life is a bitch when that happens. So I swallow the little blue pill and I fix me a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and walnuts, put in the slab of butter that melts into all the mush and I curl up with my blanket, eat slowly and feel the warmth as it slides down my throat past my chattering teeth. By the time I am done with the last spoonful the feeling is subsided. I think…hey that was easy. Then I think…if I eat that much butter and oatmeal with every panic attack I will soon weigh 450 lbs. Oh well Life’s a bitch and sometimes you get the 450 lbs ones.
Monday was my Chosen Child’s 14th birthday. I labor for days over what to get as gifts as I want the gift to be memorable and something that isn’t rejected immediately, that has happened before so I know from experience, choose carefully.
I went to the drugstore and found the perfect 99 cent card. I left work fifteen minutes early and went straight home and cooked my famous fried okra wrapped it in foil and shoved it into a birthday bag. I had found some donated sunglasses at work so I found a really cool case and cleaned the mirrored front of the glasses to a high shine and put them in the bag too. I called right before I was to leave to drive the 45 minute trip out to where he lives with his dad and the dad’s live there girlfriend. I expected to just pull up to the driveway and get the hugs, kisses and thanks Mom and then leave, job done.
Here we were standing in the dark driveway and I hand him the bag. I told him I didn’t know of anything else to get him that he loved more than this. He stuck his head down and breathed in the aroma, smells like okra Mom. The next words out of his mouth, “Oh you are so AWESOME Mom, thank you!” Of course the sunglasses took second place but hey a mother needs to have something that she does better than anyone else in the world. He asked me if I would take him down the street to McDonalds and eat with him, never would I refuse that time spent. We sat and talked and I listened to how much his voice had changed to the deep soon to be a man tone. I thought about when I first met him when he was just barely 3 yrs old. He decided then that I was Mom and never looked back. I miss him being there in my life daily but you know I can’t miss him a lot because he always sits really heavy right here in my heart.
All day Monday during the process of going through how I would present the “gift” and whether or not his father would nix some plan I threw the biggest panic attack of the day. I kept stirring the okra and planned to just leave it on the doorstep if I had to. The effort to acknowledge this special day in the life of a child I chose to raise was the most important thing in the works. I will have to say that Monday will go down in my most special memory file…the You are awesome Mom made every mile I traveled worth it.
I took my little blue pill when I got home and crawled under the warm blanket on the couch. Matsuhn took his rightful place and licked me on the chin with his rough pink tongue. He knew I needed a bit of lovin after all that anxiety, he knows just how to calm my heart rate down. Pink tongue and soft fur with a little purring thrown in for good measure.
Now that my friends is what I call a wonderful day.
I do still have my moments. Moments meaning I tear up unexpectedly or I feel the sense of urgency and anxiety of a panic attack which starts with my teeth chatter moving toward my toes. This form of movement, the teeth chatter is not controllable unless I clinch my mouth shut therefore causing it, the anxiety to move to my fingers or toes causing my pulse rate to skyrocket.
I have been told by the professionals to just “go” with it, let it happen, it will subside. I have also been told by other professionals to try and distract yourself, get your mind thinking of different things, to which I quickly told it ain’t that easy. Most of the time I can feel it coming toward me, engulfing the mind, it is all in the mind you know. It is a thought or a feeling revisited sometimes unaware sometimes not. It will creep up on you or it just hits you like a Mack truck running 70mph in a 50zone. Most of the time I can't get away from it.
I have pills. Little blue ones that stay close by my side at all times. I am not a willy-nilly pill taker for all that ails me. I resist until there is no where else to go and I don’t have the strength to climb the wall I just ran into. Life is a bitch when that happens. So I swallow the little blue pill and I fix me a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and walnuts, put in the slab of butter that melts into all the mush and I curl up with my blanket, eat slowly and feel the warmth as it slides down my throat past my chattering teeth. By the time I am done with the last spoonful the feeling is subsided. I think…hey that was easy. Then I think…if I eat that much butter and oatmeal with every panic attack I will soon weigh 450 lbs. Oh well Life’s a bitch and sometimes you get the 450 lbs ones.
Monday was my Chosen Child’s 14th birthday. I labor for days over what to get as gifts as I want the gift to be memorable and something that isn’t rejected immediately, that has happened before so I know from experience, choose carefully.
I went to the drugstore and found the perfect 99 cent card. I left work fifteen minutes early and went straight home and cooked my famous fried okra wrapped it in foil and shoved it into a birthday bag. I had found some donated sunglasses at work so I found a really cool case and cleaned the mirrored front of the glasses to a high shine and put them in the bag too. I called right before I was to leave to drive the 45 minute trip out to where he lives with his dad and the dad’s live there girlfriend. I expected to just pull up to the driveway and get the hugs, kisses and thanks Mom and then leave, job done.
Here we were standing in the dark driveway and I hand him the bag. I told him I didn’t know of anything else to get him that he loved more than this. He stuck his head down and breathed in the aroma, smells like okra Mom. The next words out of his mouth, “Oh you are so AWESOME Mom, thank you!” Of course the sunglasses took second place but hey a mother needs to have something that she does better than anyone else in the world. He asked me if I would take him down the street to McDonalds and eat with him, never would I refuse that time spent. We sat and talked and I listened to how much his voice had changed to the deep soon to be a man tone. I thought about when I first met him when he was just barely 3 yrs old. He decided then that I was Mom and never looked back. I miss him being there in my life daily but you know I can’t miss him a lot because he always sits really heavy right here in my heart.
All day Monday during the process of going through how I would present the “gift” and whether or not his father would nix some plan I threw the biggest panic attack of the day. I kept stirring the okra and planned to just leave it on the doorstep if I had to. The effort to acknowledge this special day in the life of a child I chose to raise was the most important thing in the works. I will have to say that Monday will go down in my most special memory file…the You are awesome Mom made every mile I traveled worth it.
I took my little blue pill when I got home and crawled under the warm blanket on the couch. Matsuhn took his rightful place and licked me on the chin with his rough pink tongue. He knew I needed a bit of lovin after all that anxiety, he knows just how to calm my heart rate down. Pink tongue and soft fur with a little purring thrown in for good measure.
Now that my friends is what I call a wonderful day.