Today is laughably hard to navigate. Painfully, laughably hard. Like so ridiculously hard.
But.
Despite the knot in my stomach and the clenching in my chest and the tightening of my throat, I go on.
And truly, even this is so much better than the alternative of the life I used to live. So, I’m deeply full of gratitude. And also. Because it’s always both. I am deeply in the middle of this excruciatingly hard moment.
*20 minutes later*
I was gonna tell this heartwarming anecdote about the dog and how all she wants is to go outside, and she jumps on you and then refuses to go out when you open the door because she wants you to go out with her to play, but it’s freezing and snowy and you have pjs and slippers on. And she gets all too-playfully-bitey and she just wants you to meet her when she is.
And that’s kinda what this anxiety feels like. It keeps poking me and jumping on me and biting too hard because it wants attention.
So I sat with the dog and fed her peanut butter off a spoon, so both her playful and my anxiety could have some respite.
And that was awesome for about ninety seconds.
Then R came in to tell me about her plans for the day. Originally her boyfriend was supposed to come over at 10:30, and then I was supposed to take them to the movies at 11:30. But my car (my freakin’-something-always-comes-up-with-it car) is making a sound right now that makes it too scary and unsafe sounding to drive. (The car place is squeezing me in at 2pm today, thankfreakinggod), so she navigated driving plans today and was totally on top of it (that’s my girl!), which then left me totally……not.
I want to be only grateful that she has the fortitude to continue forward. But here I am instead practicing the lesson of “both” and so I’m sitting here sad to be missing out on having her boyfriend here all day or taking them to the movies myself.
And then to top it all off, she told me how she’s been telling her boyfriend all the things she has never tried (he replied, “ohmygod, you lost your whole childhood!”) because I bought healthy food and she never had Trix cereal or Trix yogurt and we didn’t keep a cornucopia of Little Debbie’s in the house.
Sigh.
And it touches all my triggers, while I already feel triggered enough. And so I cried. Because it’s that kind of day.
(I feel the need to pause here and assure my husband that she wasn’t being mean or manipulative and that it’s okay for me to sit in a moment of uncomfortable and be sad. It doesn’t touch my self-worth in a permanent sort of way.)
So I cried and L came up to me and said, “you have snot?” and I said yes and he said, very concerned, “oh! You crying??” and I said yes and he said “why you crying?” and I told him I was sad and it’s okay to cry when you have lots of feelings.
And it is.
And also, holy heavy anxiety and overwhelm. Where the fuck is my blanket fort?