Finding My Normal

Well, that was interesting.  I received a journal as a gift for Christmas and I started writing in it on January 1st.  I wrote in it tonight and then went back and read everything I’ve written since I began. Crap, I really am a mess.  Bad day, good day, nervous, panic, feeling great, feeling sad, peaceful day, wonderful day, no medicine, need to be back on all medicine……WHAT THE HECK??  Very enlightening. What am I, bipolar?? Seriously? No, I mean SERIOUSLY?  Good Lord.  I did, however, have a pretty good day today.  I still have periods of being very emotional at church.  I had to step out for a minute this morning.  I’m not exactly sure what it is that makes me so emotional. I don’t know if it’s just that worship time makes me that way, or if it’s that being around so many people just makes me nervous.  I start to feel trapped, like I can’t get out.  I just want to go home.  So, it was either step out of the sanctuary for a second or take an “emergency xanax”.  I can’t remember the last time I took one, but they are always in my purse.  Always.  I just feel better knowing they’re in there.  IF I have to have one.  Fortunately, all it took this morning was to leave for a minute and take a few deep breaths. Then I was okay.  I have learned to stop worrying about when and if I have another panic attack.  Just be glad I’m not having one right now.  Or now. Or now.  Just take it a day, an hour, a minute, a second at a time.

Maybe instead of Finding My Normal, this blog needs to be called Finding My Grip.  I seem to have lost it. The last day and a half have been hours filled with constant breath-stopping, chest-crushing, unrelenting panic.   It showed physically this morning, but the rest of the day I have kept it buried.  I think so, anyway.  I try to hide it so that I am the only one that has to deal with it.  Try to keep it from affecting anyone else if I can at all.  When I saw a counselor for a brief period of time, she administered a test that was supposed to reveal some of my personality traits.  I was very surprised.  It was incredibly accurate.  She said that I have anger issues.  Uh, yeah.  That no one, not even my family, REALLY knows me.  True.  That I scored higher than 99% of people who take the test on my level of anxiety. I knew my anxiety level was bad but that was surprising.  That I have extreme feelings of guilt.  That’s the one that I find a bit haunting.  EXTREME feelings of guilt.  Constant guilt.  It never goes away.  I really wanted to study psychology when I was young, but was discouraged from every direction.  I think my interest was greatly due to the fact that I knew I had issues myself and desperately wanted to understand myself better.  I knew somewhere, deep inside was a normal person just waiting to burst out.  I urgently want to find her.

Well, hello from Lonely Land!  You know the game Candy Land that we ALL played as kids? I think I’ll create a game called Lonely Land where you travel through Melt-Down Forest or go over Anxiety Mountain or through Teardrop Swamp.  The colors on the cards could be black and gray instead of the bright cheerful colors used in Candy Land.  Just a thought. It’s one of those days.  At times I hide it well and at other times I don’t.  You know what makes me feel the least lonely?  My dogs….especially our little Lhasa Apso/Shih Tzu mix.  Animals love different than people do.  They don’t judge….don’t get frustrated if you cry for no reason. Or for lots of reasons.  They love  you anyway. Unconditionally.  They just want to be close to you no matter what you look like or feel like.  They are consistent.  Why can’t people have their mindset??  I look at her sweet little face and wonder if she knows that I love her and won’t ever get tired of her or give her away. Does she know when I take her to the groomer or to board her when we are going to be gone that I am coming back to get her?  Does she worry?  I do know that she is glad to see me when I get home, even if I’m only gone a little while.  None of the humans I live with run to the door and jump up and down when I get home!!  Well, okay, that might be a little weird, but you get what I mean!!  I got up early this morning and laid on the couch for a while. Sissy (the dog) got up on the couch with me and snuggled as close as she could.  I hadn’t showered, my short hair was a bit “mohawkish”, hadn’t brushed my teeth. She didn’t care. Not at all.  Just wanted to be close to me.  True, honest, sweet, unconditional love.  For a few hours I was at peace.

Sometime I think I should just try to go a few days without  even using the word “normal”…..I think I’m obsessed with it.  And really, the more I look around me the more I wonder what I think normal even IS.  I just know I don’t think I’m there yet.  It’s funny because when I was young, I was so terribly desperate to fit in.  Now, I don’t care AT ALL about that. So, I guess it is a little confusing what my problem actually is.  I just feel like every time things are going well, or normal in my mind, then something bad happens, I feel like my “normal” just went away again.  So when the crisis is over, I have to start all over again.  I really feel like it is all tied in with the anxiety and depression. And the ever-present loneliness.  Anxiety and depression always made me feel very different as a child.  It seemed my friends were always a lot more care-free than I was.  I never remember being care-free.  Ever.  I never relax completely. Unless I’m asleep. I’ve stopped my anti-depressant and all meds for anxiety.  Only one major melt-down since.  I just got really tired of swallowing a hand full of pills every morning.  Now I only take blood pressure medicine and something for arthritis.  Not too bad, I guess.  Days like today, I think I should still be taking all of it….but I’m trying to just hang in there. One thing I HAVE to work on is that when things are going well, I’m still miserable…..because I’m waiting for something to go wrong.

Normal was something I never experienced…I thought. I’m not sure I even know what normal is. Dictionary.com defines normal as “conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural”.  I didn’t feel like any of those things described my life growing up.  Normal was what everybody else had and did.  Mom and dad, siblings, summer camps, sleepovers, pets…..the list of what I saw as normal could go on forever.  I  had a mom and dad. My dad really didn’t have anything to do with raising me.  He lived there but that was about it.  No siblings, seldom ever a pet, absolutely NO summer camps, and friends could spend the night with me, but I was always the kid that wasn’t allowed to spend the night anywhere.  Not until I was older than most at their first sleepover, anyway. According to my grandmother, who set the rules of the house, camps were only for people who wanted to get rid of their kids for a while in the summer.  End of discussion. Then there was the ever-present depression, anxiety and panic attacks that made me feel so different.  Elementary school was when I actually recall having full-blown panic attacks.  My grandmother would come sit outside in her car at school.  That was the only way I could stay all day, and sometime even then I couldn’t.  I was paralyzed with fear.  Of what, I’m not sure.  As I got older, I just masked it. Ignored it as best I could, put on my fake “happy face” and went on. So lately. when the dreaded panic demon reared it’s ugly head again, I decided a blog might be a good idea.  The worst part of depression and anxiety is the loneliness that comes along with it. I thought there might be some more of you out there who feel the same way I do and maybe we could help each other, learn from one another, or just vent when we need to.  So, lets see if we can find our normal.