{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ anxiety}

I actually had a less personal post in mind today, but at this moment, I am observing myself actively spin up (down?) into an anxiety …episode.

I’m going to talk about it, so should I say “trigger warning?” No? Okay: if watching other people melting down sends you there, LOOK AWAY. Visualize some calm, k?

I’m not sure that I can call what I go through an “attack,” as if it’s some vileness that comes from outside of myself, instead of this, in-house, home-grown variety. Panic, yes, that indeed is straight-up, blindsiding, wake-me-at-3-a.m. attack stuff, but for the moment, we’re not above DefCon 3, so it’s just anxiety.

Hah. “Just,” she says.

Anyway, so, I’m having A Thing, wherein I have nine half-started emails opening, twitchy muscles, a tapping foot, and am conscious of dwelling on how much cleaning has to be done before we can have people over, and the first of the holidays is immediately on the horizon, and I have shopping to do and food to prepare for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and my brother’s birthday is coming the Saturday after Thanksgiving (what does he want?), and eldest sister’s surgery the day before Thanksgiving, and yesterday she told me what to do with her clothes in case she dies (a donation to ThredUP, if you’re interested; she thinks they’re amazing) and on a loop it crosses my mind that my niece is flat-hunting, and older sister is completely stressed out job-hunting, and there’s the usual family fol-de-rol and I’ve got stuff to do and I was going to go have another cup of tea, but maybe caffeine is not A Good Idea, because I can actively feel pressure, in my chest, over all of these things, and I started spot-cleaning the floor, which probably makes it just look dirtier, and I know I am dwelling on the cleaning thing, even though it is a random Friday morning well before the holidays and no one has died, and the likelihood of anyone dying this minute is very, very small, despite the fact that alive organisms die by minuscule degrees at all times, and there is nothing in the world the matter with this bright, bold autumn day, and I actually slept okay last night, but I am nonetheless spiraling down (up?) into this… nonsense.

Again.

Like the swing of a pendulum, like the shift of the tide, here we go and back, forth, and back again.

West Kilbride 16

Look at this calming, empty water. On the other side, Ireland. Somewhere.

What’s funny is that writing the above took me roughly four hours. What’s funny is during the above anxiety diatribe I had to get up and go into the entry way to pace and then I noticed that the summer hats were still on the hat tree in the entry way, and I needed to weed them out and just leave out the felt hats for warmth, but honestly, it’s still sunny and California so maybe not all the straw hats have to be packed away it’s not like I’m somewhere with serious weather like Nebraska, so I picked up five hats and put back three. And the hat tree is really dusty, and probably all of the hats, too, and I felt a hitch in my breathing and sure, I know people are coming to see me and aren’t judging me because this holiday is celebrating gratitude and the diversity of experience of coming to where we are in this country but every culture has cleaning and words for bad cleaners and did I say that we really need to do some cleaning before people can come over…?

On second thought, that’s not funny, that’s… me. There is no escaping ME. None. And in the midst of this, if I just think about writing, or doing anything which is, like, WORK, it’s like going through an intersection and being t-boned by a semi. So, I don’t go there, if possible. I breathe. I breathe. I breathe.

And, it will pass. Maybe now, maybe two hours from now, maybe two months from now, God forbid, two years. But, it. will. pass. It always does.

And, maybe you don’t get how I can be grateful for anxiety, and honestly, I do see where you’d wonder exactly how masochistic one would need to be to be grateful for this mess that is sometimes my brain. But, it’s my mess. It’s me, another in a long line of anxiety sufferers, yet unique from everybody else. Fearfully, wonderfully, me. Today, I’m grateful for all the anxiety and fracturedness that makes me who I am. I’ll take me, warts and all.

(Side-note: I meant what I said about that trigger warning; while you’re having an anxiety episode is possibly not the time to look up the symptoms of anxiety. Just a tip.)