Category Archives: anxiety

anxiety, Living, motherhood, parenting, postpartum depression

This House is My Baby

Three years ago, I was in the midst of the maelstrom known as kitchen renovation while designing my own dream space in utero.  In a house too small for three children and no money to move, we decided to do what we could about the logistics of our life.

We messed them up even more.

We ripped out the kitchen, thinking a more streamlined area would ease prepping and feeding three little mouths.  Streamlined is not a word to describe a kitchen reno or raising three children.

Demo started one month and one week before my due date.  Anal retentive to begin with and unknowingly suffering from a fledging case of postpartum depression, my list-making, obsessive planning, and futile attempts at control began.  I created calendars scheduling every detail.  I pushed my father-in-law to speed things up.  I perpetually pissed off our floor installer for constant e-mail updates.

I wanted that kitchen done before the baby came.  I needed running water to clean bottles and babies.  I needed the nasty mastic under the formerly linoleum floor covered up so any residual dust wouldn’t assault my newborn’s fragile airways.  I needed life in some kind of stasis before all hell broke loose.

How a finished kitchen would have prepared me for what happened in the delivery room and beyond is beyond me.  But I felt that some measure of control over my physical world would provide me some sense of control over everything else.  Well, I may not have known that then, but I can certainly see it now – especially since I’m trying to do it again.

Nearly three years to the day after the first pull of a crowbar in our kitchen, we’ve contracted a purchase and sales agreement on a new house.  Gorgeous kitchen aside, we’ve reached the limits of this house.  With one daughter just starting kindergarten and another young enough to make the switch to a new school hopefully not too traumatic, it seems like the perfect time.  Well, sort of.

With interest rates historically low, causing a backlog in bank closings, and a seller who has a cat with special needs (don’t ask), getting into this new house in time for the first day of school is becoming increasingly difficult.  And I can feel the anxiety ratcheting up as a result.  I can feel that nag mechanism gearing up for e-mail assaults on my realtor, unrealistic expectations from our loan officer, and an overall sense of unrest at the universe’s apparent disregard for my wishes.

Every fiber of my being is screaming – make it happen!  It must happen!  You have to get these kids in that house so they can find a home for their lunch boxes and a place to lay our their clothes for the first day of school, make a dry run to the bus stop, and get a feel for that new place as home before they have to figure out a new school, too.  It’s mommy guilt and good planning and type-A personality all rolled into one.  It’s also unrealistic.  Well, sort of.

If I felt any different, I wouldn’t be myself.  I just don’t roll that way.  And it’s coming from a desire to have the best for my children.

It also feels incredibly familiar.

Since 2004, I’ve been pregnant in two and a half year cycles.  When my youngest passed two years and seven months, I realized that was the oldest I’d ever had a child without expecting the next.  And I held my breath for the next three months.  No child number four, but we still embarked on a tumultuous endeavor: this whole house-buying thing.

This house has become my baby.

Apparently I cannot live through a two and half-year cycle without giving myself something to obsess about until it comes to fruition.  But while I see the parallels between my behavior now and then, at least there’s no such thing as post-house-buying depression – not until the first mortgage payment is due anyway.

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anxiety, Living, Poetry

Think about it

We look outside ourselves for distraction, rather than inside for peace.

We look to diversion rather than rest.

We fill our minds to avoid distinct thoughts rather than focusing on one that truly matters.

What would happen if we slowed down . . .

to meditate

to pray

to sleep

to stare

to breathe

to think in slow, meandering paths

to sit

We’d be happier

calmer

friendlier

more patient

more peaceful

better people, more attuned to our purpose here in life

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anxiety, Living

Cucumbers, Tomatoes, and Too Much Shit to Do

That odd sense of weightlessness, of floating adrift; the feeling that something important, some thought or memory, appointment or task, is there, but hovering somewhere on the periphery, just out of grasp.  Is there something I forgot to do, or should be doing right now?  Some pertinent task that needs to be done or the world as I know it will burst apart from the center outwards?

That was my feeling as I wandered around my garden this evening.

Yes, I needed to put those tomato and cucumber plants I’d bought in the ground before they withered up and died.  Yes, I needed to pull the damned crabgrass out of the ground before it choked all the plants that were supposed to be there.

But wasn’t there something else I should be doing?  Something on that mile-long to-do list I’d been working off for the last two weeks or so?

The end goal in my house lately has been to get said house up on the market.  I had two weeks to do all the things I’d let slide over the last few years, the things that don’t have a fighting chance of ending up on the priority list when you have small children.  Scraping the tiny stray hairs off the bottom of the medicine cabinet.  Ridding the wood in the dining room of dried milk droplets once and for all.  Magic eraser-ing the bejeezus out of my living room walls.

The phone rang, books went unread, writing went undone.

And after one last marathon night stretching into the wee hours of the next morning, my husband and I somehow had the house ready for the real estate agent to take photographs and post the listing.  I took that afternoon and evening to revel in my newfound freedom.  Yeah, the basement could still stand some purging, the garage some cleaning, but for now, we’d earned a respite.

Until the next day.  So used to being on the treadmill (or hamster wheel is more like it), my anxious mind felt like there was something I was missing.  For days on end, everywhere I looked, everything I touched, begged to be fixed, cleaned, put away.  It felt dangerous to shut that off.  Though I know I couldn’t operate at that level much longer.  The systems were breaking down.  Exhaustion – mentally and physically.  Blood-shot eyes.  Cranky.  Irritable.  Snappy.  Emotional (or is that just every time I see the ‘for sale’ sign out front?).

And I suppose that’s the point.  When I get to the point where I feel like I’m at the center of a system – objects, ideas, responsibilities swirling around me in a swiftly moving orbit – it’s time to step back before the whole thing collapses in on itself.  Or I end up in the nuthouse with a nervous breakdown.  Which reminds me of another thing that would help me keep perspective, too.  So what if I miss one of those things that seems supremely important?  Would the world end?  Would I end up checking out?  No and no.  The world doesn’t revolve around me and I can’t possibly control it all.

But I can help those tomato and cucumber plants from kicking the bucket – and if the squirrels don’t get a hold of them, end up with some tasty produce at the end of it.  Digging in the dirt always grounds me (no pun intended).  There’s something soothing about the quiet, the repetitive nature of digging, weeding, deadheading.

Maybe if I’m that present in all I do, I won’t see the ghosts of to-do lists past floating in my periphery.

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anxiety, Living

What is Home?

What is home?

A place to eat? Sleep? Bathe? Shelter from the elements?

An outward manifestation of our personal aesthetic, pleasing to the senses, and exuding a sense of comfort?

A gathering place for those we hold dear to us, to be in each other’s presence and enjoy each other’s company?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

But what is it, really?

With the three-semester exception of living in a dorm room Monday-Friday at a college twenty minutes away, I lived in my childhood home until I returned from my honeymoon. Deliriously happy in my marriage, my nights were fraught with depressive tossing and turning as I tried to reconcile this new dwelling with my pre-existing ideas of home. And over the last eleven years, there have been times when I awaken from a very deep or sick-induced slumber and forget for a moment that when I open my eyes I will not see the pale lilac wall of my youth.

Nevertheless, this ‘new’ home has truly become home. My husband and I have built the foundation of our family here. From dinners on the living room floor to detritus thrown from a high chair. From office to nursery to toddler’s room to nursery again. From relaxing soaks in the tub to all-out splash fests. From a quiet haven to a bustling hub of activity.

And now the question that begs to be asked: Have we become too much for this home? Has our family outgrown this lovely little space? How much is enough? This home serves the basic functions of a family (i.e. eat, sleep, bathe, shelter), but we’re busting at the seams. It’s become a battle of space to breathe vs. burgeoning piles of crap. How much can you edit before you affect the quality of life? How much do we really need?

For the last several years, I’ve had a quote tucked into the glass door of the hutch in my dining room, always visible to remind me to contemplate it from time to time.

“It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards ‘having’ rather than ‘being’, and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyments as an end in itself. It is therefore necessary to create life-styles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments.”
– John Paul II

Will a new, more streamlined, spacious place help us to foster connections and communion with others (including the immediate members of our family)? Does the desire for a new home come from a desire for beauty or the want for bigger and better? Am I trying to make life easier or keep up the proverbial Joneses?

I’m hoping the very fact that I’m questioning means I’m making conscious, valid decisions. Perhaps I’m having misgivings because the idea of redefining home again is so scary to me. My thoughts swirling and anxieties mounting, my husband offered me some sage advice I almost missed. The worry in and of itself was almost comforting, because not knowing where we were going or what we should do, that endless loop of thoughts felt almost productive in the face of uncertainty. But I forced myself to look at him when he said the following words, ones I knew I couldn’t miss, “Home is wherever you and I and the kids are.”

And isn’t that the very best answer to so many questions.

 

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anxiety, Automobiles, postpartum depression

Too Much Stimuli

Anxiety = Distraction = Stupidity

That’s usually the formula when I get super-stressed.

Nearing the end of my pregnancy with Julia and a hectic school year, I rushed from my teaching duties to get Bella at daycare.  A tractor-trailer truck making a delivery pulled off the road just enough to make me think in my altered state of mind that I could squeeze through, but not enough for me to actually do so.  My side-view mirror thwacked against the bottom corner of the loading shelf at the back of the truck, leaving an ugly black gash.  The truck was none the wiser, my little car a gnat flying by in great, stupid haste.

A year or two later when I was stay-at-home mom leaving the house solo for the first time for an extended period of days for a writing institute, the mornings were harried to say the least.  I zipped to the adjacent capital city and through the busy streets, late of course.  On one particularly narrow street always lined with cars, I again misjudged my time/space continuum and thwacked that poor mirror.  I’m surprised that poor thing hasn’t just shriveled up and fallen off the car in protest (though the automatic adjusters are not quite as precise anymore).  Perhaps it would have if it’d happened a third time.

Luckily, it didn’t.  This morning, it was almost the front end of the car that got it.  And it was not an inert object on the other end of the deal.  Fortunately – for the mirror, the car, and my marriage – all that occurred were many angry faces directed at me through two windshields worth of glass.

What is it about anxiety that makes my mind go elsewhere?

Postpartum, it was intrusive, irrational thoughts that invaded my consciousness.  My thoughts are no longer reaching those levels of irrationality, but the fact that they’re more ‘normal’ is almost worse.  It’s easier for the distractability to fly under the radar until it’s nearly overwhelming, until it’s almost too late.

Except for the moments when I freakishly self-aware.  The moments when I can feel my thoughts spinning out of control; an energy boiling up under my skin threatening to force its way out and roll on down the street; my mind grasping for one singular thing to hold onto and coming up empty.  At those moments, it’s like I’m at the center of a maelstrom of thoughts, worries, ideas swirling around me with no one stationary object to use as a marker.

Planning meals for the week and writing a grocery list?  Choosing which household chore to do first in the limited amount of time before the kids get home from school?  Prepping the house for a realtor’s evaluation?  Aaahh!  I’m supposed to prioritize in this state of mind?  Choose from myriad options and lists of items?  No wonder I drive into things.  I’m driven to distraction.  Unfortunately the next stop is stupidity.

I must get a grip – maybe it just shouldn’t be on the steering wheel till this storm passes.

 

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anxiety, Living, Poetry

I am a bruise

I am a bruise

A soft spot on your skin that it hurts to look at

A navy hoodie with black sweats toasty warm from the dryer

An ache so familiar it’s almost comfortable

That vulnerable appendage inviting confrontation

from door jambs and jolly bitches,

pointy corners and conscientious offenders

Apply pressure until I turn green and purple,

puce and chartreuse

A mere shade of who I am

Sore and tender,

when will I be at ease in my own skin?

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anxiety, Living, motherhood, postpartum depression

No Use Crying Over Spilt Whatever

Pinch, pinch, pull.

If my daughter’s preschool teacher can inspire twenty-five four year-olds to use this technique to open their pint-size pouches of fruit snacks, you’d think I’d be able to employ it to open a bag of pasta.

Not so.

Employing said technique, I managed to send dozens of uncooked Ditali skittering across the counter.  Surprisingly enough I caught myself before a torrent of curses loosed from my mouth, which is usually what would happen.  I pressed my body up against the impending avalanche and managed to keep all but a few Ditali from dropping.  I gathered the rest up by the fistful, after seeking out a few strays, and threw them into the boiling pot, shepherding the lost sheep to lead them to the slaughter.  And the overused idiom came to mind.

There really is no use crying over spilt whatever.

If I had flipped out (as I said I’m wont to do), what purpose would it have served?  I’d give my two year-old a few more choice words to add to her repertoire of words bound to be repeated when least desired?  I’d pump my blood pressure up a few points?  I’d push even more pasta over the precipice with my spastic gesticulations?  Really, there’s nothing positive that ‘crying’ would have added to the situation.  I’d still be a few Ditali short of a pound.

Not unlike the time I decided to bake Christmas cookies with all three kids.  Though the ‘baby’ was fifteen months old and I should’ve been ‘recovered’ from postpartum depression, I still got stressed very easily, had very little patience, and hated anything that made my job harder.  In this case: candy sprinkles.  Each time a candy-coated ball hit the floor, my rip-shit meter went up another notch.  Then Bella picked up the bottle, gave it a good shake, and the whole flippin’ lid flew off, blanketing the floor in a layer of rainbow-hued ball bearings.  I felt the wave of anger swell up inside me, but like some out-of-body experience, I stopped it before it crested.  Somehow, it occurred to me that it didn’t matter.  Let them throw candy around like confetti, for goodness sake – couldn’t get any worse now, could it?

This is not to say I’m happy when things like this happen.  Very often, you will find me cursing when I find myself under the dining room table on my hands and knees in the middle of dinner mopping up spilt milk.  And stuff like this is just one more thing threatening to push me over the edge in my already heightened state of stress.

I try to be Zen.  I try to employ my relaxation response.  I apologize to Jesus for taking His name in vain – again (something I never did until I had the third kid, by the way).  But like there’ll always be stressors, I’ll always be striving to keep it on the down low.  Just like I’ll be finding those flippin’ candy sprinkles under the stove each time I pull it out for the rest of my life.

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anxiety, Living, Writing

Back to the Future

When I was a kid, particularly a teenager, the only time I would clean my room was when I had a report to do. Might seem like faulty logic, but the crippling thought of sitting down and starting a report actually made cleaning my room look like a fun endeavor. I had to clear off the desk before I could sit at it to write, no? And Mom had been after to me to clean for some time now. It needed to be done!

By the time it was apparent I could not put off said report-writing any longer, I would become a conglomeration of the many phrases my mother often used to describe me: running around like a chicken with its head cut off, burning the candle at both ends, pulling through in the eleventh hour. And while it was undoubtedly stressful and quite a haphazard way of doing things, I would always finish the report – and usually quite well. I’d get some inspiration at the last minute and write like a fiend until I’d proven my point – much to my mother’s chagrin. While she did not want to see me fail in school, she frowned upon my methods. Clean room or no, I think I made her more nervous than I did myself.

Procrastination and spontaneous ‘Hail Mary’s have always been my way. Being out of college for over a decade now (ugh – how did that happen?), the phenomenon hasn’t been as apparent, but it still exists. Knowing I have a week until my daughter’s birthday party, I’ll putz around the house all week and stay up until 2 AM the night before scrubbing toilets and baking cakes (not at the same time). Well aware that the parade that runs close to our house happens the second Saturday of June every year, I’ll be planting containers with patriotic-colored flowers at dusk the night before. I’ve just shifted the focus from class work to housework. Though maybe if I had more papers to write, my house would be cleaner – ha!

But I am writer. As a writer not under contract, I use self-imposed deadlines to keep me active and productive. I follow my writers’ group guidelines of submitting a week before our meeting. I post to my blog at least once a week, every Thursday. Except for weeks like this. I’ve fallen off the wagon, people. And because, as far as I can tell, most cases of procrastination are born of crippling ideas of perfectionism, I am paying for it. Oh, the guilt.

I’m in the middle of revising my young adult novel. I’ve heard a lot of writers say they love the revision process, struggling through the draft process just to get to it. As someone who loves to wait till the last minute and work off an epiphany and has problems with spatial relations (chapter reorganization, wha?), it’s trying to say the least. So instead of figuring out how to fix the problem in the chapters I was due to submit to my group, I went into cleaning mode. Luckily, I had the perfect excuse for rationalization. My friend was coming over with her baby and he needed a clean floor to frolic on, no?

We had a lovely visit, and spirits buoyed by my ordered surroundings, I even strapped myself to the computer after they left and fixed the problem (I think – we’ll see how next week’s meeting goes!). But, like a game of dominoes, my cleaning pushed the writing tile back a day, which pushed the blog tile back. Hence, today’s post should have been yesterday’s.

But no sense living in the past with its failed promises and rumpled to-do lists. I may relive my bad behavior patterns from time to time, but it’s a waste of time to punish myself for them. Trying to change them bit by bit would be good, but being aware of them is a start, right? I also need to acknowledge what such behaviors say about me. I do work best under pressure. And while it’s starting to make me as crazy as it used to make my mother, it still does offer a certain level of success. And all of us really are just stuck between past and future. I guess it works to operate within some combination of the two.

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anxiety, motherhood, parenting, postpartum depression, Recovery

Three Ring Circus

Don’t tell my baby, but my third pregnancy was a huge surprise.

My husband and I cut our wedding cake to the tune of Dean Martin’s “Memories are Made of This” – we envisioned a life with ‘three little kids for the flavor’.  But just like the top to the spice jar coming loose unexpectedly and dumping a whole pile of paprika in the pot, we got all that flavor all at the same time.

When Julia, our second, was born, we said, “Oh, yeah, she’ll definitely have to be older than Bella is now when we have a third.”  God chuckled at that one.  Just after Christmas just under two years later, we found out Number Three was on its way.  Angela was born when Julia was four months younger than Bella was at her debut as a big sister.

When we found out I was pregnant, my husband and I were instantly wrapped in a cocoon of haze.  Everything seemed blurry and just out of reach.  Lost in our own thoughts, we wandered around in shock.  We didn’t tell anyone right away because we’d always waited until we knew the baby was well on its way, but also because we were waiting to wrap our heads around it.

Mere days after proof positive, we attended a New Years’ Party.  In attendance was a mother of three I’d come to know through the host.  I knew wasn’t emotionally or mentally able to tell her I was about to join her club, but I needed some assurance that I could do this.  She always seemed such a magnanimous mother, building her children up while laughing enough with them to keep them grounded.  If she said it was do-able, I could do it.  I asked her what it was like going from two to three children.  She said, “I have never been more acutely aware of the fact that I only have two hands.”  We laughed, her sense of humor seemingly able to overarch any obstacle in her way.  I can still see her standing there, those two hands raised in front of her.

Her words came back to me once we were all home from the hospital.  When someone asked me what it was like going from two to three, I said, that yes, there is some truth to the theory that it’s easier than going from one to two because you’re used to keeping all the balls in the air – but what no one tells you is that there’s always. a.  ball.  in.  the.  air.

I was a veritable ringmaster with all the balls I kept hurling into the air and trying frantically to catch and hoist again.  There was no intermission.  No time to catch my breath.  And I felt like I’d missed a very important set of lessons at circus school.  The fact that this circus took place under the big top of postpartum depression did not lend any sort of solace to the situation.  There were times I felt like I was the #1 attraction for the freak show.  But even though I was at the mercy of my hormones, I somehow made it through – and thankfully didn’t end up looking like the bearded lady.

Life is still crazy, but I’m feeling less so lately.  It’s just the usual brand of crazy, the kind that comes with three little kids and the flavor they bring (aided by the hula hoops the Easter Bunny brought each of them this year).  It may have been an acquired taste, but now it’s my favorite flavor.

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anxiety, Living, motherhood, parenting

Torn

I felt like a thief, stealing away in the gloom before the house’s inhabitants awoke from their slumbers.  My voice caught in my throat when I called to my husband, “Give them kisses for me when they wake up.”  It felt so wrong to be leaving, especially when they didn’t have the chance to protest.  They’d been prepared well in advance, but somehow, it still felt covert.

I looked at the house as I drove away and waved at the closed curtains, the locked doors, the house already closed to me mere minutes after my leaving.  In my mind’s eye, I saw my youngest’s eyes peeking over the windowsill to wave another time I recently left.  I missed them already.

It took me awhile to settle into the drive, but eventually I pulled out the CDs I’d packed for the trip.  (Yes, CDs – apparently, my technology is at pace with the frequency of solo road trips).  I’d packed selections to fire me up for a marathon drive and a fun reunion at the end with a friend I don’t get to see nearly enough.  I’d also picked stuff I can’t listen to when driving the kids around.  I listened to the entire Beastie Boys’ Sounds of Science anthology and then switched to The Clash.  While I was having a grand old time car-dancing and singing along, it was about this time that I realized, I must be angry.  Punk rock, rap, ska with a driving back beat, songs with titles like, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “We’re on the Road to Nowhere”.

Was/is my subconscious trying to tell me something?  Is some part of me totally repressed by my current state of affairs?  Am I really unhappy with the way life is?  Am I speeding down the highway chasing after the ‘me’ I lost somewhere along the line?  Am I doing such a sucky job at getting respite time that I’m about to blow?  Or did I really just need a road trip?

Somewhere around hour four of the six-hour trip, the soothing effects of the road took over.  I got used to the hum of the motor around 2800 rpms, the feel of my hands on the steering wheel, the crick in the back of the heel from my foot’s constant 45 degree angle on the gas pedal, the dull ache of the full bladder that I’d chosen to ignore till the final destination.  The traffic thinned, the sun came out, and my mind cleared.  I thought about everything and nothing.

I realized that one freeing thing about being totally overwhelmed and screwing up postpartum was that my heretofore-crippling bent toward perfectionism was thrown out the window.  Now, if not ever before, it was blindingly clear that it just wasn’t gonna happen.  And that theory was thrown out the window, when later that night, I confided to my friend that I felt like I couldn’t possibly do everything for my children.  She said that feeling came from me worrying so much about doing such a good job (i.e. perfectionism).

The whole weekend was a study in contradictions, me being torn in different directions.

Fear gripped me when we headed to the restaurant at 3 PM for lunch.  What about dinner?  Used to following a schedule acceptable for little bodies needing balanced meals, it took me awhile to adjust to eating whatever, whenever I wanted.  I ate so much at “lunch”, I had chips and Twizzlers for “dinner” at some point in the evening – I lost track.  I ate granola and yogurt for breakfast the next morning, but then gorged on a short stack with all the sides for “lupper” (we messed with meals so much this weekend, my friend started giving them her own names).

I wistfully noticed the babies in the arms or on the hips of nearly every person we passed.  Were there really that many small children in the state of Maine or was I missing my own babies that much it just seemed like it?  Though my husband does say all there is to do in Maine during winter is drink and have sex, so maybe there really are that many kids – and maybe that’s why he’s always wanted to move there ☺

Yet, I relished in looking at every single item on every single aisle of every single store if I felt like it – with no one to whine at me.  I loved chatting with my friend with no screeching interruptions – though we had so much to catch up on, we interrupted each other plenty of times.  I loved not waking up in the middle of night!!!!!!

I think what I liked most of all was being able to operate on the basest of levels.  Basic functions: eat, sleep, pee, laugh, breathe, be.  The weight of responsibility was lifted from my shoulders – if only for 36 hours.  And that’s what I meant when in my last post, “that which I was trying to escape had stowed away in the backseat”.  I don’t want to escape my children at all.  I love them and will always – even if it’s the death of me.

It was just really nice to get away.  Though, the squeezes I got when I walked in the door Sunday night were more powerful that any pressure I’ve ever felt in this trip called motherhood.

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