In which I begin to lose my shit a little.....

“Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself 

without anyone noticing.

I’m like an ambulance on two legs,

hauling the patient inside me to last aid 

with the wailing cry of a siren 

and people think it’s ordinary speech.”

This pretty much sums up how my week felt.  Even though I really did have an amazing week, it wasn't without consequences.  All of the new experiences, sights, sounds, people, etc combined with constant stressors of kids, work & daily life led up to a few fairly wicked anxiety attacks.  I had a lot of chest pain, A LOT of nausea, feelings of pending doom & danger... you know, all the typical stuff anxiety attacks have to offer.  The thing also is that because I am who I am, not many people knew about it at all and the rest didn't know the extent of it, because I am so adept at hiding it well.

I managed to keep it together better at some times than at others, but started to lose it in the therapist's office.  I also complained that I've hardly been able to write or do anything creative even though I want to SO BAD.  She said she thinks my system is in a bit of shock right now with all of the dredging up of old stuff I've been doing.  So to just be patient with myself.  That's probably the reason behind the brand-new panic attacks too.

Did I tell you she wants me to get mad? lol  It's a valid suggestion.  I tend to let myself feel anger and/or depression for about 30 seconds before trying to stick my chin out and carry on, the whole time apologizing for being so negative.  It seems that in my stages of grief, I tend to jump straight from bargaining to acceptance, skipping over the anger and depression for the most parts.  Haven't quite nailed down for myself why it is that I do that yet.  I really would like to get to the bottom of that one for myself.  It's looking like a combination of things.  First of all, a part of me feels it's just plain unladylike and rude.  Also it feels like a betrayal to me to be really angry at someone I love.  I don't let people talk shit about my loved ones and that includes me.  Also, I need to make nice so they will want to stay and not leave me.  Maybe they'll want to come back?  But they certainly won't want to if they see that I'm pissed off at them.

Mostly though, it's because my insides have just plain had ENOUGH of pain, loss and trauma.  I just can't take anyfuckingmore.  I stuff the bad experiences and the grief down so low that I can't get to it and then I put the smiley face back on or start cracking jokes in an attempt to move forward as quickly as possible.  Yeah, that's not working so well for me.  Because I can assure you it doesn't go away.  No, if you could see the traumas stacked inside of me, one on top of the other like colored sand poured into a glass bottle.  And coming from the family that I come from where everyone has the "get over it, it's done and over with" curse, it was never easy for me to be the black sheep who went against the grain and decided not to be that way.  Which I did by the way... decided early on to go against the grain and be completely different... and it still happened to me to a point anyways.

So now that we are uncorking the bottle and trying to begin the archeological dig through the lifetime of layers, the residual effects are beginning to show.  I think it's a good thing that I have the summer to myself because this might get ugly.  She wanted me to get angry and she's gonna get it! lol  The problem is that this anger is beginning to come out and it gets displaced because I don't know how to deal with it or what to do with it.  In San Fran, I went off on a Denny's manager because they didn't have SOUP [for the second time that weekend!].  Then today, I yelled over the phone at the insurance guy and told him how badly he was irritating me.  This is not normal behavior and certainly not normal for me.  Soooo.... still a work in progress at this point.

Brace yourselves everybody.... I'M GOING IN!   (aka: I wish there was an app for that!)

xoxo
Veronica