This last week has been really hard emotionally for me. I think what triggered it was dad being sick and me worrying for him and mom. But reality is that this has been lurking at the edge of me for a while now and I've been fighting tooth and nail to keep it at bay and I just can't anymore.
I think every time one of the kids leaves the house that something horrible is going to happen to them. Every phone call that I don't recognize the phone number , I am terrified that it is someone calling to tell me that something happened to one of the kids, or someone else I love. I have a constant feeling of impending doom. I think that somehow any person I love is in jeopardy just because of me. However, I don't know what to do to stop all this. I don't know what I have done to deserve all this. I know life is not fair, but it just doesn't seem like anyone else has thing after thing after thing happen to the ones they love. And it's all stuff I have mostly no control over.
So this week I don't know, I've done some crying, over some pretty stupid stuff I know, but I can't help it. Yet even when I'm crying I don't feel like I'm feeling anything, I'm just crying. Part of me thinks that truly not feeling anything would be good, maybe I wouldn't be so terrified and anxious and stressed and depressed. Feeling nothing sounds a lot better than all of that. But this week of not feeling anything has just been worse. It's like I'm walking through water, everything is slowed down, I can't think as quickly.
Work is awful too, I dread going to work, the thought of having to interact with people all day long and seem happy and ok and all that jazz seems an insurmountable task. I drove around for half an hour on Friday before I could make myself turn into work. And even though my job can be stressful, I love it, I know I do, but not this week.
Friday afternoon at work, I didn't get much work done, I just couldn't make my brain actually work. What I did is look up therapists for myself and called a couple and left messages to call me back. I know that I need to get back into therapy, I can't fix this myself I don't think. So I think starting therapy will help.
I decided I also need to start doing some things to help myself as well. So this labor day weekend, I'm going to give myself 9-10 hours of sleeping time but no more. When I'm anxious/stressed/depressed/etc all I want to do is sleep, it is my escape, but in the long run I don't think it really helps me. So far I've done ok. I slept 9 hours last night. Which may seem like a lot, but I've always required more sleep to function fully. Generally 8 to 8.5 and I'll wake up on my own, this morning I woke up after 8 and then dozed on and off for another hour before I got out of bed. Then I made my bed. It was a visual reminder when I looked in there that I was not going to sleep today.
I'm also going to slowly work up to working around the house. All I want to do it sit and veg and sleep and when I'm feeling this way it's really easy for me to look at everything I need to do and never get to any of it, since normally I feel like I need to finish the whole task at once. Today (and this weekend), I'm just going to do a bit then take a break/play a computer game/chill for bit, then just keeping doing that back and forth.
So it's 5pm now, I've been up since 8:30 this morning, I've done 7 loads of laundry, a bit in the kitchen (it needs attention the most so it the most daunting to try and work in there), a bit in the 2 bathrooms, picked up a bit in the living room/dining room. I'm hanging out all the clothes to dry, which I really like, it's soothing somehow, maybe clothesline meditation?
I do feel better today than I have this last week. Less guilty (though guilt is still there about the kitchen). I spend a lot of my life feeling guilty. Maybe that has contributed to the funk I've been in.
On the off chance that someone someday reads this I feel the need to validate why I am where I am right now. The hard part is where to start, how much of my life history has contributed to where I'm at now. The last 5 yrs, 10 yrs, 39 yrs...I'm not sure. I know that there are lots of people out there that have it just as bad and even worse than I do. I'm not living in a war zone or battling starvation, and for those things I am grateful. But the reality is that I live in the Midwest US and I'm middle-income. This is where I'm at and although I know it could be worse, I'm still terrified of what might happen to someone I love.
All 3 of my children have totaled cars. My son had his in Aug. 2005, he rolled a single time and had no injuries. The most recent accident, Katydid's was in May 2008. She wasn't hurt, just sore, nor were the people in the other car, for which I'm very grateful. Nor was it her fault, it was an older couple and they didn't see her and pulled out in front of her.
My youngest totaled her car on Oct. 2, 2007. The car rolled 6 times and she was ejected out of the sunroof on the 3rd. She was life-flighted to the hospital. Many of my fears, flashbacks, nausea causing events/triggers are from that first hour, the phone call, hearing the helicopter come, hearing and seeing her trauma team being assembled (it is one of the weirdest, there were 10-12 people, which made me feel good that they were going to take care of her, but then I realized my daughter was so injured that she needed a 10-12 person trauma team).
Now every call that is an unknown number makes me fearful to answer, every time I see or hear a helicopter or drive by an accident I get nauseous. And I never ever want to let any of my kids or family drive again. But I know that isn't realistic, so instead I say "Drive safe" every time and live with my fear of what may happen.
The thing is she was incredibly lucky, she had only a mild concussion but no permanent head injury, a chipped vertebrae but no damage to her spinal cord, 4 pelvic fractures (that did not require surgery), a tibia plateau fracture, a left clavicle fracture, an internally lacerated kidney(no surgery), bruised spleen, both lungs bruised, and multiple cuts/scapes/road rash (but none on her face). It was a rough intensive recovery but I had time built up at work so I was able to take 2.5 months off at the beginning and continued to work only part time for the next month or so to help her to and from school and to appts.
I should be counting my lucky stars and I am extremely grateful that she had no permanent injuries, but instead I just feel like the boot is going to drop at any time and she won't be lucky again. Or Katydid won't, or TJ won't, or ... the list includes all my family.
I think this probably 3 or 4 posts worth of data, so going to publish now and just write each day on how I'm feeling.
All 3 of my children have totaled cars. My son had his in Aug. 2005, he rolled a single time and had no injuries. The most recent accident, Katydid's was in May 2008. She wasn't hurt, just sore, nor were the people in the other car, for which I'm very grateful. Nor was it her fault, it was an older couple and they didn't see her and pulled out in front of her.
My youngest totaled her car on Oct. 2, 2007. The car rolled 6 times and she was ejected out of the sunroof on the 3rd. She was life-flighted to the hospital. Many of my fears, flashbacks, nausea causing events/triggers are from that first hour, the phone call, hearing the helicopter come, hearing and seeing her trauma team being assembled (it is one of the weirdest, there were 10-12 people, which made me feel good that they were going to take care of her, but then I realized my daughter was so injured that she needed a 10-12 person trauma team).
Now every call that is an unknown number makes me fearful to answer, every time I see or hear a helicopter or drive by an accident I get nauseous. And I never ever want to let any of my kids or family drive again. But I know that isn't realistic, so instead I say "Drive safe" every time and live with my fear of what may happen.
The thing is she was incredibly lucky, she had only a mild concussion but no permanent head injury, a chipped vertebrae but no damage to her spinal cord, 4 pelvic fractures (that did not require surgery), a tibia plateau fracture, a left clavicle fracture, an internally lacerated kidney(no surgery), bruised spleen, both lungs bruised, and multiple cuts/scapes/road rash (but none on her face). It was a rough intensive recovery but I had time built up at work so I was able to take 2.5 months off at the beginning and continued to work only part time for the next month or so to help her to and from school and to appts.
I should be counting my lucky stars and I am extremely grateful that she had no permanent injuries, but instead I just feel like the boot is going to drop at any time and she won't be lucky again. Or Katydid won't, or TJ won't, or ... the list includes all my family.
I think this probably 3 or 4 posts worth of data, so going to publish now and just write each day on how I'm feeling.
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