After dropping the girls to their respective schools and listening to Karl and Gugl spit back all the rhymes and rhythms that Virginie was sending their way on the iPad, I arrived twenty minutes early to my yearly physical. This was my second time around, as the first visit a few months back ended with my having a miserable migraine complete with halos, auras, and vomiting. I was also going to share with my dear doctor the details of my recent hospital visit for an anxiety-induced hallucination of a heart attack and general panicked state that I am living in. I thought I should get there early.
At present, I am in incredible health, save the anxiety, which has left me relieved but also confused. So many people have reached out to me to share stories of high anxiety and panic that have ruled their lives at various stages. I have heard from the medicated, the meditated, the yoga'ed and the illicit-substanced. It all tells me the same thing. Modern life is just wrecking our fragile souls. Those with kids and those without. Those with lots of money in their coffers and those who are struggling day to day. Even when we tell ourselves that we are doing it, thriving, achieving, something can come along and just flip you on your ass. I am all about the positive thinking. I believe in it, believe it works, think it connects us all and prevents us from feeling the loneliness and alienation that getting trapped in our own dramas can produce. And yet I am still twitching inside, chomping at the bit to be released from the gate to get into that race with whom? With myself?
I stopped at the grocery store after my appointment to get some snacks for the people. We will more than likely be home alone this weekend and far into next week due to the hubby's work schedule, so I wanted them to have some special treats. I have always held that no matter what my mood or anyone else's really, there is no reason to take it out on people I encounter on the street, in the store,or at home (if I can help it). There was a young man behind the deli counter eagerly awaiting customers. I heard him bantering with his colleagues and his tone was a little geeky, awkward, but kind. I asked for some turkey but was indecisive, so he came around the counter to show me the different kinds of turkey with his little review of each. After making my selection (the not so exciting Boar's Head Roast Turkey as the girls don't love "spicy") I asked if he could have someone help me with the fish. In the hopes of changing it up for my basic food group eating ninja princesses, I wanted to make some tilapia, boring to the chef husband, but heaven to the girlies. My deli guy tells me that no one is over there but he "would gladly help me." He chose some lovely fillets and wrapped them beautifully, tossing out the paper when he didn't think he'd done a neat enough job. I thanked him and we wished each other a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend and I paid at the cashier and left.
When I unwrapped the turkey at home, I was struck by how wonderfully it was presented. Cut well, wrapped so that the slices did not disintegrate or crumble as soon as I touched them, with a piece of wax paper placed in the fold to make it easier to peel off. I know how silly this sounds but I have to tell you, given the events of the past days, I was so touched to find someone still taking joy, at least pride, in his work. This young man was kind, decent, helpful, and did his job quietly and with care. His energy brought me back to this stratosphere and I stopped, for at least five minutes, bugging out about something, who knows what. It felt good to be a part of this collective, all of us, instead of trapped in my thoughts, my fears, my terrors.
In the strangest places, we can find the signs. We get the clues. I don't know this man, don't know what he is going through in this life, what ails him, when or why he hurts, but I know that today, he showed me himself at his best with dignity, pride, and compassion and it made me want to do it too. For just a moment, it took me out of my anxiety, away from my stress, and reconnected me with the everyday.
(c) Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Nobody Panic! Get on the floor!
I'd been pacing around the house that evening, folding laundry, running a bath for the girls, chatting on the phone, putting toys away, catching glimpses of the news, local, so mostly fires, stabbings, and kidnappings with a little bit of the weather and traffic report to keep me interested. Once I'd gotten the girls in the tub, earlier than usual because we'd been trapped inside after school because of the rain, I started to feel faint, a little light-headed, and a bit spacey. I sat on the toilet seat while the girls bathed (played) and started to tell them about 911, what to do in an emergency, where to go (downstairs), where not to (out the door and up the street). I told them that I would write telephone numbers on the fridge and that we would practice dialing them. They were confused. I was too. I really had no idea why I suddenly felt like they had to have this information RIGHT.NOW. I said that were I to faint, that would be the signal to call 911 and to wait for them to ask certain questions. We have been working on our address and other important information but Lily was most confused about fainting. "What is fainting?" she asked and when I showed her, both girls stood up in the tub and promptly begged me not to do that.
I didn't faint. I did stay down on the ground for a bit though giving them a "demo." When I stood up, the room started to spin and I felt like I would throw up. I was hot and clammy and then my chest started to hurt on the left side. It felt like a three hundred pound person was sitting on my chest and my breathing became more and more labored as I gasped for full breaths. When my hand started to tingle and my fingers went numb, I freaked. I didn't call 911 as I had instructed the girls to do. I had them get out of the tub and get on their pajamas and I called my sister. I told her I thought I was having a heart attack and that I didn't want to die in front of the girls. She tried desperately to convince me that I wasn't having a heart attack, but a panic attack. She asked if I was pacing up and down in fear that if I stopped I would drop. I answered, "Yes" but I still felt like I was going to drop to the floor. I got off the phone with her and called my friend Tiffany and asked her to come over right away. I told her I thought I should call 911 but needed someone to stay with the girls.
I smiled at the girls as they got dressed, put on the television for them, pet their faces, and tried to reassure them with my facial expressions and gestures that everything was fine. Then I called 911 and told them I feared I was having a heart attack. Tiffany arrived minutes before the EMTs and then it all broke loose. Here's how I presented. Forty-two year old, African-American female, with no history of heart disease or diabetes complaining of chest pain, numbness, and shortness of breath. I am afraid to stand up, am a bit hot but dry and they are looking for clammy. Tiffany is distracting the girls, but I can see Lily peering at me, stealing glances, trying to understand what all the commotion is about. There are three large men in uniform in our house looking at me, attaching electrodes, taking my blood pressure, touching my forehead, telling me I should go to the hospital. I go because I want to be sure. I am leery because I can only imagine the cost. Imagine that choice. Thank you, US healthcare system.
After a few hours of tests, blood sampling, chest x-rays, blood pressure reviews, I realize, as does everyone else involved, that I am not having a heart attack. And I want to go home. I am tired. I am cold. I am hungry and I am just wondering how I got to this place. This place where I am living in such a heightened state of anxiety that panic and fear has overtaken my senses. I have been this way for a while yet never considered this toll. My body is kind of over me and just cannot hack this program anymore. The postpartum in Barbados. The absolute stress, terror, and isolation that came with living there. The disconnect from everyone and everything I had known. The near complete breakdown of my marriage. The realization that there are very few people in our lives, certainly in mine, who can walk with me. (Those who do, do it with aplomb and I am sincerely grateful. But I am a fool who often tries to get "blood from a stone" and suffers greatly for that.) The feeling like a freak, being overwhelmed at mommying, scared I will scar my kids as I have been. It is all too much.
Months ago I started a new behavioral therapy. It has truly changed me and I think for the better. It is called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) which
But first I had to feel like I was having a heart attack. Because these images, these thoughts, these feelings, this pain, this hurt cannot come up and go away so easily. And as I allow myself to acknowledge them, not rationalize them, it hurts. Badly. So I thought I was dying, having a heart attack. In some ways I am. I am letting go of that scared little girl who doesn't trust anyone or anything in the world and trying to hold hands with the people who really love me and only those people. I am trying to seek out the joy and not always prepare for the pain or the letdown. I am holding other people accountable and not just blaming myself when they hurt me! I am screaming "Uncle!" when I have had too much and am not apologizing for having a lower threshold than expected especially when I have proven time and time again that my threshold is pretty damned high.
This pressure, this panic, anxiety can kill you and I still have too much to share. I am off the floor but I am limping to the door. I want to go outside without my shoes on, laugh my head off , tickle and be tickled. I can't let go of my past, but I surely don't want it to be the definition of me, just a marker on the road. And if I am to pass in front of my children, I want to be a supremely old lady who has lived an incredible life, shared with wonderful people, not taken the small things so seriously that they destroy me, and to have loved, loved, loved.
(c) Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.
I didn't faint. I did stay down on the ground for a bit though giving them a "demo." When I stood up, the room started to spin and I felt like I would throw up. I was hot and clammy and then my chest started to hurt on the left side. It felt like a three hundred pound person was sitting on my chest and my breathing became more and more labored as I gasped for full breaths. When my hand started to tingle and my fingers went numb, I freaked. I didn't call 911 as I had instructed the girls to do. I had them get out of the tub and get on their pajamas and I called my sister. I told her I thought I was having a heart attack and that I didn't want to die in front of the girls. She tried desperately to convince me that I wasn't having a heart attack, but a panic attack. She asked if I was pacing up and down in fear that if I stopped I would drop. I answered, "Yes" but I still felt like I was going to drop to the floor. I got off the phone with her and called my friend Tiffany and asked her to come over right away. I told her I thought I should call 911 but needed someone to stay with the girls.
I smiled at the girls as they got dressed, put on the television for them, pet their faces, and tried to reassure them with my facial expressions and gestures that everything was fine. Then I called 911 and told them I feared I was having a heart attack. Tiffany arrived minutes before the EMTs and then it all broke loose. Here's how I presented. Forty-two year old, African-American female, with no history of heart disease or diabetes complaining of chest pain, numbness, and shortness of breath. I am afraid to stand up, am a bit hot but dry and they are looking for clammy. Tiffany is distracting the girls, but I can see Lily peering at me, stealing glances, trying to understand what all the commotion is about. There are three large men in uniform in our house looking at me, attaching electrodes, taking my blood pressure, touching my forehead, telling me I should go to the hospital. I go because I want to be sure. I am leery because I can only imagine the cost. Imagine that choice. Thank you, US healthcare system.
After a few hours of tests, blood sampling, chest x-rays, blood pressure reviews, I realize, as does everyone else involved, that I am not having a heart attack. And I want to go home. I am tired. I am cold. I am hungry and I am just wondering how I got to this place. This place where I am living in such a heightened state of anxiety that panic and fear has overtaken my senses. I have been this way for a while yet never considered this toll. My body is kind of over me and just cannot hack this program anymore. The postpartum in Barbados. The absolute stress, terror, and isolation that came with living there. The disconnect from everyone and everything I had known. The near complete breakdown of my marriage. The realization that there are very few people in our lives, certainly in mine, who can walk with me. (Those who do, do it with aplomb and I am sincerely grateful. But I am a fool who often tries to get "blood from a stone" and suffers greatly for that.) The feeling like a freak, being overwhelmed at mommying, scared I will scar my kids as I have been. It is all too much.
Months ago I started a new behavioral therapy. It has truly changed me and I think for the better. It is called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) which
But first I had to feel like I was having a heart attack. Because these images, these thoughts, these feelings, this pain, this hurt cannot come up and go away so easily. And as I allow myself to acknowledge them, not rationalize them, it hurts. Badly. So I thought I was dying, having a heart attack. In some ways I am. I am letting go of that scared little girl who doesn't trust anyone or anything in the world and trying to hold hands with the people who really love me and only those people. I am trying to seek out the joy and not always prepare for the pain or the letdown. I am holding other people accountable and not just blaming myself when they hurt me! I am screaming "Uncle!" when I have had too much and am not apologizing for having a lower threshold than expected especially when I have proven time and time again that my threshold is pretty damned high.
This pressure, this panic, anxiety can kill you and I still have too much to share. I am off the floor but I am limping to the door. I want to go outside without my shoes on, laugh my head off , tickle and be tickled. I can't let go of my past, but I surely don't want it to be the definition of me, just a marker on the road. And if I am to pass in front of my children, I want to be a supremely old lady who has lived an incredible life, shared with wonderful people, not taken the small things so seriously that they destroy me, and to have loved, loved, loved.
(c) Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Staying up late
So now we have come to my favorite part of the night. That would be the time when, having taken anywhere from a 30 minute to 2 hour nap during the day, Virginie finds herself sitting on the couch with me while Lily sleeps. Usually this time is somewhere between 8:45 and 10:30 pm and renders it impossible for me to get a moment to myself before needing to go to sleep. Tonight, Virginie and I are up watching tv while I wait for her to nod off. She is talking my head off.
Yes, I know the rule. Don't change locations or you're dead. But we started off the night in my bed, all three of us, which is a special treat as nine times out of ten I say an emphatic no and wrangle them into their own bed with plushy animals, Barbies, water-filled sippies, tissues tucked under pillows. Lily passed out after rambling on about the unicorns and swan princesses, how much she loves her teacher, her desire for just a bunny, a hamster, a kitten, and a guinea pig and possibly a puppy as a gift for her teacher who loves them (so Lily tells me). I sat there silently, unmoving, hoping that Virginie too was about to drift off. No such luck. In the dark, nearly pitch, I hear the tiniest of voices whisper/whine "but I'm not tired. I want to go out there and stand."
And that's when I came out to the living room. To the second location. Where all bets were off. She saddled up to me on the couch with her Rapunzel Barbie, a blanket, her sippy cup with juice, taken from the fridge to replace "just the water. I don't want water, "and we snuggled together under that blanket watching the final performance night of "The Voice." I know, bonding with my child and yadda yadda yadda but it was 9 pm. I am responsible for the people from sun up to sundown and much later. I just need a few minutes, an hour, a little bit to be with myself and my thoughts and God willing be creative.
So tonight, as Virginie sat big-brown-eyed next to me flashing a level of extreme cuteness so intense even the Grumpy Old Troll would melt, I wrote and thought and thought some more about my life with these people. I love them so. I want to do better by them than was done by me. I let them stay up if they can't sleep and sit with me, snuggle, chat even when all I want is some alone time. I do still believe that I need that time, deserve it, owe it to myself but I don't have to hit them over the head with it. They are still in that "I'm the center of the universe" stage, and even though I do know some adults who have yet to move out of that stage, I know my girls will. It's my job to get them there, as it's my job to let them feel loved, respected, protected, and cared for.
In fairness to dear Virginie, she woke up at 6:45 am and was put down for a nap at school at one o'clock. She really wasn't tired tonight when bedtime rolled around. No matter the schedule I'd dreamed up, that chil' was not goin' nowhere near that bed. I had to change my program, do something other than I'd hoped until she was ready. It's a short time, this. I keep hearing that. All the mommies are out there shoutin' it. I do, I do, I do believe it. I do. But I want to create, to make things, to do. I want to be seen and heard and understood too. I love to talk to the girls about their hopes and dreams and whims and fantasies. But I want to express mine too.
I am staying up late again tonight. It's quiet and I am writing. Here. In a journal. On a manuscript. Everywhere I can get a thought out. And I am crying because this quiet time, night time, is one of my favorites and I am torn between wanting to share it with my girls, mark it on their souls as special time with Mommy or save it for myself as the same.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.
Yes, I know the rule. Don't change locations or you're dead. But we started off the night in my bed, all three of us, which is a special treat as nine times out of ten I say an emphatic no and wrangle them into their own bed with plushy animals, Barbies, water-filled sippies, tissues tucked under pillows. Lily passed out after rambling on about the unicorns and swan princesses, how much she loves her teacher, her desire for just a bunny, a hamster, a kitten, and a guinea pig and possibly a puppy as a gift for her teacher who loves them (so Lily tells me). I sat there silently, unmoving, hoping that Virginie too was about to drift off. No such luck. In the dark, nearly pitch, I hear the tiniest of voices whisper/whine "but I'm not tired. I want to go out there and stand."
And that's when I came out to the living room. To the second location. Where all bets were off. She saddled up to me on the couch with her Rapunzel Barbie, a blanket, her sippy cup with juice, taken from the fridge to replace "just the water. I don't want water, "and we snuggled together under that blanket watching the final performance night of "The Voice." I know, bonding with my child and yadda yadda yadda but it was 9 pm. I am responsible for the people from sun up to sundown and much later. I just need a few minutes, an hour, a little bit to be with myself and my thoughts and God willing be creative.
So tonight, as Virginie sat big-brown-eyed next to me flashing a level of extreme cuteness so intense even the Grumpy Old Troll would melt, I wrote and thought and thought some more about my life with these people. I love them so. I want to do better by them than was done by me. I let them stay up if they can't sleep and sit with me, snuggle, chat even when all I want is some alone time. I do still believe that I need that time, deserve it, owe it to myself but I don't have to hit them over the head with it. They are still in that "I'm the center of the universe" stage, and even though I do know some adults who have yet to move out of that stage, I know my girls will. It's my job to get them there, as it's my job to let them feel loved, respected, protected, and cared for.
In fairness to dear Virginie, she woke up at 6:45 am and was put down for a nap at school at one o'clock. She really wasn't tired tonight when bedtime rolled around. No matter the schedule I'd dreamed up, that chil' was not goin' nowhere near that bed. I had to change my program, do something other than I'd hoped until she was ready. It's a short time, this. I keep hearing that. All the mommies are out there shoutin' it. I do, I do, I do believe it. I do. But I want to create, to make things, to do. I want to be seen and heard and understood too. I love to talk to the girls about their hopes and dreams and whims and fantasies. But I want to express mine too.
I am staying up late again tonight. It's quiet and I am writing. Here. In a journal. On a manuscript. Everywhere I can get a thought out. And I am crying because this quiet time, night time, is one of my favorites and I am torn between wanting to share it with my girls, mark it on their souls as special time with Mommy or save it for myself as the same.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.
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