Oh, One
I'd like to brush my yellowing teeth (thank you coffee, thank you gross smoking habit ages 15-30)without contemplating the meaning of life. Every morning. Looking at my freckles, thinking of Nie Nie and how she will never again look at a facefull of freckles. Finding my eyes filling with tears. Admitting to Mr. Curry that I worry that our children will grow old and get sick and not have the right kind of health insurance, and we won't be there to help them, hold their hands if they are sad, buggle them up if they are lonely, remind them they are precious and loved and safe, safe, safe. ( No one is safe ) ( Everyone is safe )
Yes, Two
I'm waiting for test results. I'm afraid. I want someone to tell me it is all right, Mr. Curry tells
me it's all right and I don't believe him. What I really want is not to be told that nothing bad will happen ( eventually all pessimists are proved right ) but to know that I can rise to any occasion, the worst event, and fill my spirit with courage, love, joy- an indomitable will to overcome if not the IS, the I AM ( It will never be all right ) ( It is always all right )
Sweet Three
I absorb other states of being through emotional osmosis. I was stripped of my protective barriers, the immune system of the heart that love builds in childhood was broken down in mine. Destroyed. Never underestimate the human spirit; I grew like that famous flower in the crack of the sidewalk on Main Street, and can love and be loved. The walls are thin and my heart is quick to take the rhythm of another... does not hold it's own well enough yet. Well enough to be around fear without feeling afraid. If you are afraid for me, I will be afraid. Like my children- if they fall, and I am wide eyed and downturned mouth, they cry. I am more afraid of living in fear than I am of the things I am afraid of.
I have learned and want now to plant and grow upwards. ' Maybe their craziness spoke a truth. There are lessons in these lives, but we are no longer obligated to learn them. ' - Elizabeth Wurtzel
Friend, Four
I want you to know something, my InLovers. I laugh in the face of my foes! I laugh in my breakfast cereal. I laugh at my own freckled blue-eyed ridiculousness, the bizarre fact that the same little round faced Southern girl fighting black girls in the Jackson Mississippi backyard because she was the only white girl in miles, the same snot picking wall wiping boy chasing changeling is this woman sitting properly at this desk, feeding cats, walking dogs, raising children, loving a man as a wife. I laugh in my toilet. I laugh at myself when I cry and give myself the hiccups. I may be certifiable, but I'm having fun.
' The food in this place is really terrible. Yes, and such small portions. That's essentially how I feel about life.' - Woody Allen
( Everyone is alone ) ( Noone is ever really alone )
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Stigmata, Mind Body Connection
Mr. Curry has no work today, so we are both home. He's eating Organic Maple Oatmeal and I'm here, clacking away. I take Zoloft for anxiety and have been feeling a little dull lately. It makes me sad to feel a little dulled, but not. even. close. to as sad as I feel when I'm panicking. * I tried natural methods, I really, really really did. They didn't work well enough. *And that's nooo good for a Mommy of three, nietha. I have been incredibly anxious since childhood, because of the state of my family. There were a few good years, Mom tells me, but I only have glimpses of them, that always resolutely remind me of the way sunlight slips in and out of the clouds on an overcast day. Mostly I remember the sadness and the lonliness and the fear. I feel terrible about this for my Mother. Every single good memory I have revolves around her, and I can't imagine how hard it must be to have both of your children remember their childhood with such sadness.
I love my Mother.
It's amazing how much the body/mind connection has influenced my life. My parents took me to see some wildly inappropriate movies at the drive-in growing up, and one of them revolved around a young nun who had convinced herself that Christ had impregnated her at the nunnery, when indeed a man had raped her. She bled from her hands and feet. On the way home I asked about this. I was eight? Maybe nine? My parents explained stigmata to me, how a person's own will and mind creates the bleeding of Christ from their ankles, hands or feet, how some believe stigmata is a sign of God's hand.
Well I was fascinated. Dumbstruck with awe and horror. Not only did I have to deal with what was brutal, I could create brutality with my own mind? Did this mean that if i was afraid of something, I could make it real?
I have thought about this ever since.
My anxiety has created a whole host of physical symptoms at times, ranging from tics to pain, from cold and hot patches of skin to a numb crawling of the nerves. Telling the difference between anxiety and a real symptom is impossible, especially since I do have endometriosis and hypothyroidism, both of which are autoimmune and come with a host of symptoms. I seem to have a particular genius for this kind of creation: I can fall asleep thinking of a toothache and wake up with throbbing molars. I can worry I'm pregnant and my breasts swell and throb. A young hypochondriac wrote a book about this phenom, and an article here at Salon.com.
On the other hand, I can use this power for good. When I was in the 5th grade, we had moved back from Jackson, Mississippi to San Diego, and I attended school in Pacific Beach, not knowing anyone, intimidated. However, I decided firmly that not only would I be the most popular girl at school that year, I would get straight A's.
Guess what happened? I was the most popular girl, and I got straight A's.
The problem is that I am full of fear. It ebbs, it flows, sometimes I feel I have won, but it lurks in my cells. My family history is one of brilliant alcoholic manic-depressive anxiety ridden men and women who have great accomplishments ( My Grandfather Ethridge was the Supreme Court Judge in Mississippi, for example, and wrote THIS ) but serious mental undoings. There is schizophrenia on BOTH sides of my family. Take this soup and mix in a scary childhood- and you get Me.
I like to think I've done an amazing job with this history. I found a therapist who saved my life, and saw her for years. I worked DAMN HARD, let me be sure to say, I hurt badly and struggled and made mistakes, but I never gave up. I had my son, and I knew the road ahead of me was hard, but I had to make it my own.
However, the fear lurks. I have a stronghold of weapons against it, most of all, greatest of all, Love. Not the idea of love, the actuality of it- Mr. Curry, holding me through hours of panic years ago, my daughter, falling asleep with her hand in her brother's, Dakota whispering to me in the late hours in his bed 'Mom I always know I"ll be OK, because you always believe in me. If you believe in me, I'll never give up' , Mr. Curry, changing diapers, walking crying babies, forcing himself to listen to his exhausted and frustrated wife at night when he should be sleeping, all the years of our marriage, the day in and day out of never. giving. up.
What we get from that struggle to rise above is pictures like the ones in the last post. We get the breath and smile and eyes of our children rising in front of our eyes when the skies go dark and that dull, sharp pain or hollowness threatens to consume: I know these are the things that will comfort and staid me in any darkness, illness or death....
I am hungry for information on the mind body connection; I want to know how to control my mind. There is a fantastic book, ' The Body Never Lies ' that is all about this, written by, I think, a British woman who is famous for her theories. She uses examples of famous men and women who suffered during childhood and then were very ill in adulthood, or died from their illness, as proof of her theory that holding down emotion, forcing forgiveness, muting pain, creates disease.
I am looking to create life.
So here's to the praying (to a God I don't know is there or not), the exercise, the writing, the reading, the healthy eating, the vitamens, the talk therapy, the day to day doings, all that I gather to my chest, press into my body, to clear the past from my cells and create a mind-body at peace at last.
I love my Mother.
It's amazing how much the body/mind connection has influenced my life. My parents took me to see some wildly inappropriate movies at the drive-in growing up, and one of them revolved around a young nun who had convinced herself that Christ had impregnated her at the nunnery, when indeed a man had raped her. She bled from her hands and feet. On the way home I asked about this. I was eight? Maybe nine? My parents explained stigmata to me, how a person's own will and mind creates the bleeding of Christ from their ankles, hands or feet, how some believe stigmata is a sign of God's hand.
Well I was fascinated. Dumbstruck with awe and horror. Not only did I have to deal with what was brutal, I could create brutality with my own mind? Did this mean that if i was afraid of something, I could make it real?
I have thought about this ever since.
My anxiety has created a whole host of physical symptoms at times, ranging from tics to pain, from cold and hot patches of skin to a numb crawling of the nerves. Telling the difference between anxiety and a real symptom is impossible, especially since I do have endometriosis and hypothyroidism, both of which are autoimmune and come with a host of symptoms. I seem to have a particular genius for this kind of creation: I can fall asleep thinking of a toothache and wake up with throbbing molars. I can worry I'm pregnant and my breasts swell and throb. A young hypochondriac wrote a book about this phenom, and an article here at Salon.com.
On the other hand, I can use this power for good. When I was in the 5th grade, we had moved back from Jackson, Mississippi to San Diego, and I attended school in Pacific Beach, not knowing anyone, intimidated. However, I decided firmly that not only would I be the most popular girl at school that year, I would get straight A's.
Guess what happened? I was the most popular girl, and I got straight A's.
The problem is that I am full of fear. It ebbs, it flows, sometimes I feel I have won, but it lurks in my cells. My family history is one of brilliant alcoholic manic-depressive anxiety ridden men and women who have great accomplishments ( My Grandfather Ethridge was the Supreme Court Judge in Mississippi, for example, and wrote THIS ) but serious mental undoings. There is schizophrenia on BOTH sides of my family. Take this soup and mix in a scary childhood- and you get Me.
I like to think I've done an amazing job with this history. I found a therapist who saved my life, and saw her for years. I worked DAMN HARD, let me be sure to say, I hurt badly and struggled and made mistakes, but I never gave up. I had my son, and I knew the road ahead of me was hard, but I had to make it my own.
However, the fear lurks. I have a stronghold of weapons against it, most of all, greatest of all, Love. Not the idea of love, the actuality of it- Mr. Curry, holding me through hours of panic years ago, my daughter, falling asleep with her hand in her brother's, Dakota whispering to me in the late hours in his bed 'Mom I always know I"ll be OK, because you always believe in me. If you believe in me, I'll never give up' , Mr. Curry, changing diapers, walking crying babies, forcing himself to listen to his exhausted and frustrated wife at night when he should be sleeping, all the years of our marriage, the day in and day out of never. giving. up.
What we get from that struggle to rise above is pictures like the ones in the last post. We get the breath and smile and eyes of our children rising in front of our eyes when the skies go dark and that dull, sharp pain or hollowness threatens to consume: I know these are the things that will comfort and staid me in any darkness, illness or death....
I am hungry for information on the mind body connection; I want to know how to control my mind. There is a fantastic book, ' The Body Never Lies ' that is all about this, written by, I think, a British woman who is famous for her theories. She uses examples of famous men and women who suffered during childhood and then were very ill in adulthood, or died from their illness, as proof of her theory that holding down emotion, forcing forgiveness, muting pain, creates disease.
I am looking to create life.
So here's to the praying (to a God I don't know is there or not), the exercise, the writing, the reading, the healthy eating, the vitamens, the talk therapy, the day to day doings, all that I gather to my chest, press into my body, to clear the past from my cells and create a mind-body at peace at last.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The History of Us, Part One
Mr. Curry and I fell in love over years and years. When we first met-
I was madly in love with someone else. Or so I thought. The love of my life had to start subversively, like everything else. I was enthralled with my first love, who we'll call J. J and I had met at seventeen, both being mangled by the respective horrors in our households, and we clung to each other's hearts and bodies as only those who are drowning can. We fell as only those who are without wings can fall, into each other with a desperation fueled by young lust and a short lifetime of sorrow.
J's family was disintigrating rapidly. His mother was grossly obese, hooked to a home oxegen machine, two pack a day smoker, bacon and cake eater, pill popper, drinker, a childhood victim of molest by an Uncle. His father was overweight, prostate cancer survivor, bearded and farsighted, furious. We would know he was home every day from the sound of the door slamming and ' GODDAMNIT! ' or maybe ' WHAT THE FUCK!! ' The problem would be a full trash can, a backpack in his way...entering his home, with his children, who he had failed to protect from neither his wife nor himself. J's siblings were both curled inward as tightly as crabs, pinchers out.
I was no happier, no safer, only my family's problems and pain were smoothed cleaner, harder to see underneath the starched white sheets, the floors kept so clean, the furniture polished. My mother was a very good housekeeper.
J. and I swirled around and around each other like small, futile tornadoes, driven like snow flurries into the wild. I wanted anything Wild, but not Dark. The difference was clear to me. The drug dealers in their twenties who lived in the town close to me, the ones who invited me and my fifteen year old girlfriends over for boozing and drugging, the ones who stabbed each other for no reason at all, these men were Dark. I knew Dark, it was in my father's face. It was in the corners of our house at night, bleeding into the middle like a ruptured organ. Dark was in my grandfather's mental illness, his assurance that the owner of Yogurt Heaven was working for the CIA. Wild was different. Wild was something beautiful, something free, something caught up in the open spaces of canyon trembling under the wind,
the sky spreading open in the Ocotilla desert- Wild was what I felt with J. He was not Dark. He was innocent, sweet, despite his heavy metal posters and black leather jacket, despite his long hair and tight Levi's, despite his family, he was not Dark. I was safe with him.
Safe, but not protected. He wouldn't hurt me, but he couldn't stop anything that did.
Very slowly, over years, I realized that J was not only Wild, but muted. He had sacrificed dearly to stay innocent. He had dulled his senses, closed down his eyes, ears, mouth, spoke less and less, mumbled, twitched like a hare caught in a trap in his sleep. He had given up growing up to stay clean inside, to not burn alive in the miserable life of his mother ( who he loved dearly ) beating him with a wooden spoon or his father drinking in the study, or watching his younger sister sit terrified and immobilized with fear when Mom fell down the stairs and burst her head open on the linoleum.
I wanted protection from my pain, my family, my Father, and as I realized how stunted J had let himself become, I grew furious. The fury was terror. I had fooled myself into thinking I was not alone, and I wasn't alone but I was alone in the fight. J had given up, and he was happy to lay still and quiet with me, breathing each other's air, trying to stay safe. I wanted more than that. I wanted to live.
****
I was madly in love with someone else. Or so I thought. The love of my life had to start subversively, like everything else. I was enthralled with my first love, who we'll call J. J and I had met at seventeen, both being mangled by the respective horrors in our households, and we clung to each other's hearts and bodies as only those who are drowning can. We fell as only those who are without wings can fall, into each other with a desperation fueled by young lust and a short lifetime of sorrow.
J's family was disintigrating rapidly. His mother was grossly obese, hooked to a home oxegen machine, two pack a day smoker, bacon and cake eater, pill popper, drinker, a childhood victim of molest by an Uncle. His father was overweight, prostate cancer survivor, bearded and farsighted, furious. We would know he was home every day from the sound of the door slamming and ' GODDAMNIT! ' or maybe ' WHAT THE FUCK!! ' The problem would be a full trash can, a backpack in his way...entering his home, with his children, who he had failed to protect from neither his wife nor himself. J's siblings were both curled inward as tightly as crabs, pinchers out.
I was no happier, no safer, only my family's problems and pain were smoothed cleaner, harder to see underneath the starched white sheets, the floors kept so clean, the furniture polished. My mother was a very good housekeeper.
J. and I swirled around and around each other like small, futile tornadoes, driven like snow flurries into the wild. I wanted anything Wild, but not Dark. The difference was clear to me. The drug dealers in their twenties who lived in the town close to me, the ones who invited me and my fifteen year old girlfriends over for boozing and drugging, the ones who stabbed each other for no reason at all, these men were Dark. I knew Dark, it was in my father's face. It was in the corners of our house at night, bleeding into the middle like a ruptured organ. Dark was in my grandfather's mental illness, his assurance that the owner of Yogurt Heaven was working for the CIA. Wild was different. Wild was something beautiful, something free, something caught up in the open spaces of canyon trembling under the wind,
the sky spreading open in the Ocotilla desert- Wild was what I felt with J. He was not Dark. He was innocent, sweet, despite his heavy metal posters and black leather jacket, despite his long hair and tight Levi's, despite his family, he was not Dark. I was safe with him.
Safe, but not protected. He wouldn't hurt me, but he couldn't stop anything that did.
Very slowly, over years, I realized that J was not only Wild, but muted. He had sacrificed dearly to stay innocent. He had dulled his senses, closed down his eyes, ears, mouth, spoke less and less, mumbled, twitched like a hare caught in a trap in his sleep. He had given up growing up to stay clean inside, to not burn alive in the miserable life of his mother ( who he loved dearly ) beating him with a wooden spoon or his father drinking in the study, or watching his younger sister sit terrified and immobilized with fear when Mom fell down the stairs and burst her head open on the linoleum.
I wanted protection from my pain, my family, my Father, and as I realized how stunted J had let himself become, I grew furious. The fury was terror. I had fooled myself into thinking I was not alone, and I wasn't alone but I was alone in the fight. J had given up, and he was happy to lay still and quiet with me, breathing each other's air, trying to stay safe. I wanted more than that. I wanted to live.
****
Friday, September 5, 2008
crying it out
if i could get my mind to be quiet when i asked, i could conquer fear. my mind has a room that opens the door without my permission. inside the room it is pitch black, and there is a baby crying in a crib. i try to enter the room and pick up the baby, but i cannot. i am held back at the doorway. i cannot close the door. i cannot pick up the baby.
no matter how far away i walk, i hear the baby crying.
anxiety.
i saw my doctor yesterday and he is switching the Zoloft that i've been on my entire adult life. my past illness and surgeries combined with great financial stress and the unexpected call from my Father seemed to have put my in a pickle. stewing in my juices, so to speak.
and i was realizing another important correlation: i had to stop exercising a few years ago. i have endometriosis, and the cyst i had on my ovary was 6 cm.
i couldn't exercise, and then after my surgery i had another cyst, and another surgery, and then i broke my foot.
all my self medications have been taken or given. drugs- stopped as a teen. drinking- didn't drink for my entire twenties, now drink sparsely. smoking- quit at 30. large amounts of sugar and bread- stopped a few years ago, still struggle. now i have to give up my daily coffee, because it seems to be contributing. i am drinking decaf as we speak, better than nothing, but hardly a Starbucks Doubleshot.
ah and my Father.... i haven't seen him for 9 years. none of us have. and this is the way it will remain. but he found me, my number, a few months ago, and he called. he called and i answered.
' hello? '
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Panic
i had a panic attack today.
i hate them. i have specific phobias. those phobias translate into panic attacks occasionally, starting about three years ago. i had gone my entire twenties without having one. i had generalized anxiety of varying degrees but for years that was even 'gone'.
i'm searching for how to stop this. i know i can't stop bad things from happening to me, so i'm not obsessively looking for protection from whatever i fear. bad things will happen, even really bad things. that is unfortunately what happens to almost everyone at some point. it's happened to me already, in the past. i am not trying to stop things from happening, i'm trying to stop having panic attacks that they will.
i have 'triggers'. so this means when i hear those specific words, i get a huge rush of adrenaline, like i'm climbing the largest roller coaster in history. and then i get to the top, survey the reality that i am thousands of feet in the air, protected by nothing, and i drop. the drop is the panic attack. it knows no reason. fear is not reasonable. it doesn't give a shit about logic, because it is it's own logic.
some people have panic without trauama, but mine comes directly from my abusive childhood, which was filled unrelentingly with fear and emotional and occasionaly physical pain. i had panic attacks as a kid without having any idea that is what was happening; i thought that was just life. that was just me. i suppose i imprinted onto panic, and now my cells have understood it to be part of my makeup.
therapy, Zoloft, healthier living and love pulled me through my twenties.
then a very rough patch of life involving disease, pain, fear and lonliness descended, and the panic came back with a big fucking SURPRISE PARTY, like the most nightmarish surprise party you could ever imagine, sprung on you in a dark alley after the love of your life dumped you and your best friend told you you sucked and you had the spins and no one ever loved you or ever would, and you walked into a dark alley and your feet stopped working and you were frozen in place and mass murderers and child molesters jumped out and up and down with black balloons: SURPRISE!!!!!
that is a panic attack.
i want to do biofeedback but can't afford it.
i'm really pissed off at this alley and it's reaccurance in my life. i'm tired of the fear in my past finding new ways to attach and grow on to my present life, which has children i love, a husband i love, writing, books, beautiful things.
i hate them. i have specific phobias. those phobias translate into panic attacks occasionally, starting about three years ago. i had gone my entire twenties without having one. i had generalized anxiety of varying degrees but for years that was even 'gone'.
i'm searching for how to stop this. i know i can't stop bad things from happening to me, so i'm not obsessively looking for protection from whatever i fear. bad things will happen, even really bad things. that is unfortunately what happens to almost everyone at some point. it's happened to me already, in the past. i am not trying to stop things from happening, i'm trying to stop having panic attacks that they will.
i have 'triggers'. so this means when i hear those specific words, i get a huge rush of adrenaline, like i'm climbing the largest roller coaster in history. and then i get to the top, survey the reality that i am thousands of feet in the air, protected by nothing, and i drop. the drop is the panic attack. it knows no reason. fear is not reasonable. it doesn't give a shit about logic, because it is it's own logic.
some people have panic without trauama, but mine comes directly from my abusive childhood, which was filled unrelentingly with fear and emotional and occasionaly physical pain. i had panic attacks as a kid without having any idea that is what was happening; i thought that was just life. that was just me. i suppose i imprinted onto panic, and now my cells have understood it to be part of my makeup.
therapy, Zoloft, healthier living and love pulled me through my twenties.
then a very rough patch of life involving disease, pain, fear and lonliness descended, and the panic came back with a big fucking SURPRISE PARTY, like the most nightmarish surprise party you could ever imagine, sprung on you in a dark alley after the love of your life dumped you and your best friend told you you sucked and you had the spins and no one ever loved you or ever would, and you walked into a dark alley and your feet stopped working and you were frozen in place and mass murderers and child molesters jumped out and up and down with black balloons: SURPRISE!!!!!
that is a panic attack.
i want to do biofeedback but can't afford it.
i'm really pissed off at this alley and it's reaccurance in my life. i'm tired of the fear in my past finding new ways to attach and grow on to my present life, which has children i love, a husband i love, writing, books, beautiful things.
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