Crash

I came home from the gym the other day to find my four youngest children running down the road barefoot, the three little girls in tutus and Diamond in a cat unitard. I started to cry. I'm gone one hour and my children are running off to the circus? Oh, wait, the only life they know is circus life. Well, at least next time they run away to the real circus, I wish they'd wear shoes. So, anyway, I herded them back into the house and told them they were grounded to their rooms until they were clean. The little girls were in there five hours and nothing was getting done. I came to find out that they were climbing out the window and playing down the street and then would come back every once in awhile to tell me they were still cleaning. Instead of freaking out I sat down on my bed, took a deep breath and said a prayer thanking God for medication.

I have spent my whole life running from myself and my issues. I figure if I can keep going with superhuman strength and speed I won't have time to find out that I'm really human afterall. In April, I hit my wall in this ridiculous marathon I've been running for the last twelve years. I had felt it coming for months so I tried to run faster and look for other diversions (ie. going to Disneyland), but you can't escape the inevitable forever. All of my horrible insecurities and burdens placed on my shoulders caused me to have anxiety and panic attacks and those kept escalating. I would have crying spells where I would collapse onto my floor and cry for hours and hours until I was numb. Finally, it all came down on my at once in a terrible panic attack combined with uncontrollable crying and shaking. I took Giselle and went to E.R. I didn't want to tell anyone because I was embarrassed that I couldn't handle it myself--that I wasn't strong enough to make it go away. I ended up having to tell my mother because I needed someone to pick up the kindergartners. When she found out, she said, "It's okay, Jess, we've been waiting for this for awhile now."

They put me on xanax and Lexipro. The xanax was a nightmare and I was like a morbidly depressed zombie from night of the living dead, but it ended my anxiety attacks and I only needed it for a couple days. The Lexipro has made such a difference for me and I can handle so much more than I formerly could without crying or screaming or having a panic attack. It seems like I can't accomplish as much because it's taken away some of my mania, but I also don't cry and hate myself either. I also got into counseling which has been a great blessing. The first day I went, I was really nervous. The counselor came out in these MC Hammer pants with bells on them. I looked at her and thought, "You're here to fix me???" But she won me over when she said, "Look, honey, everyone's got shit in their lives." I started laughing thinking, "This is awesome, I'm paying someone to swear at me!" She's been great and I've really overcome a lot of weaknesses and flaws that I've tried to ignore for a lot of years. So, I guess in a strange way, I am thankful for the "opportunity" to have a complete breakdown and start over and see things from a new perspective. When this happened, I really questioned everything. I questioned what I believe in, my religion, myself, my future, my goals, my motives, my personality, etc. I peeled back all the layers and stepped outside of this paradigm I've been living in my whole life and made a conscious decision what I wanted to keep and what I thought was wasteful or foolish. I am still working through some of those questions and maybe that will be a separate post, however, I really feel like this is a place everyone needs to come to at some point in their lives.

I won't lie, this has been the most painful, frightening, and exhausting year of my life so far (knock on wood), but I know it's going to save my life in the long run. I keep thinking of that scene in Watcher in the Woods (an old Disney movie from the 80s with Bette Davis), where the girl falls into a pond and gets tangled in some branches. The creepy old woman (Bette Davis) comes out and starts pushing the girl down further into the pond with a stick. The girl looks at her in horror because she thinks the woman is trying to drown her, but then realizes that the old woman had to push her deeper into the water to free her from the branches in order to save her life. I feel like that's the perfect metaphor for what I am going through. I have to be pushed down to depths I've never experienced in order to be stronger and freed from the issues that have weighed me down for so many years. Right now I am still in the "I feel like I'm drowning" stages, but I know it's going to be better in the end.

Things are getting better and I am handling things with much more grace (in a large part thanks to medication). I am also realizing that this is my life. This is what I get. I get one day at a time. Some days I'll kick butt, some days I'll get my butt kicked, and some days I'll just survive. But that's my life: one plus one plus one plus one.