WELL, THAT SUCKED!

 Let me preface what I'm about to say with I'm sorry if this sounds like whining. That is not my intention at all. I just want to write about an experience I had over the weekend that freaked me out a bit so that I can hopefully stop thinking about it!  It's more of a therapeutic writing down of things, if you will. It's harshing my chill.

Over the weekend, Steve was gone to visit some family. I was alone, which I have never minded being. These days, especially with, (*gestures widely at the world*) all of this that's going on, I rarely get time by myself and it's nice to do my own dos and think my own thinks. No offense to Steve, but, yeah.

So Friday was fine. Friday was great. Friday was all the things that a Friday should be and more. I stayed up fairly late so Friday wouldn't be over so fast, you know how those things go. So when I finally went to sleep, I was 100% fine. That is important to know.

I woke up exactly two hours later in a blind, complete, irrational panic. You know that feeling you get when someone jumps out at you and you scream and jump back? Imagine that, but that feeling doesn't stop. I sat up in bed, mostly asleep, and every fiber in my body is on edge telling me that something was very, very wrong. It felt like electricity was running through my body and my first clear thought was that I couldn't breathe. I sat on the edge of the bed gasping and clawing at my throat, only to only finally realize that I was breathing just fine. That didn't help, though, so I ran through the house to the bathroom and threw some cold water on myself (because that sometimes works to shock me out of an anxiety attack) but it just made it all worse. I managed to grab one of my anti-anxiety pills out of the cabinet and tossed it back, but I knew that it would take about 1/2 an hour before it would take effect.

I ran back and got into bed, with waves and waves of panic running through me. I lay there and tried to rationally figure out what was wrong, which is another thing that sometimes helps pull me out of an attack, but my brain wouldn't cooperate. I kept thinking "I'm here alone and something is wrong. I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!" Every one of my muscles were locked up and I was shaking. It was awful. I thought about calling my mom, but I knew she would be afraid because I couldn't tell her what exactly was going on, and if she decided to drive across town (which she absolutely would) she might not be careful. I finally called Steve, even though he was hours away, because what I mainly needed was someone to talk to to keep me from feeling so alone. I hated to do it, because I knew he'd be asleep and he might get mad, but thankfully he didn't. I lay there in bed, shaking, talking to him, trying to explain what was going on, but finally just talking about anything while trying to unlock my brain from whatever was going on. He talked me into taking another of the pills, which I did - chewing it up this time to make it work faster - and after about 15 minutes, I calmed down enough to get off of the phone. It was terrifying, and I have no idea what the trigger was that caused it.  I've had one anxiety attack similar to it before, years ago, and I wound up in an emergency room because the doctor thought I was having a heart attack. This one was arguably worse. I finally managed to fall asleep again after about an hour when the meds kicked in.

I ended up sleeping until after noon, because the medicine does that to me. When I woke up, I felt like I'd been in some kind of accident. I hurt all over, and I still had remnants of the shakes. I couldn't eat, I couldn't work on the graphics stuff I needed to do, and I couldn't even take a shower. I sat in my chair and watched mindless TV until I could function like a human being again. My mom called and I told her what had happened, and I was right not to call her, I think. She would have come right away, but not in a good frame of mind. She invited me to come and stay with them, but I told her no. I had to be at church the next day, and I didn't want to admit I was too shaky to drive. I ended up taking another anti anxiety pill and calming down enough to eat and get out of the chair for a while, but I was completely drained. I was ok after that, but I made sure to have my medicine in the bedroom with me and a phone in my hand when I went to sleep, in case it happened again. Thankfully, it didn't.

Hand to God, I don't know what triggered such an awful attack. I don't sleep much anyway, so it wasn't going to bed late. I was in a great frame of mind when I was falling asleep, and I don't remember any nightmares. The main thing I remember when waking up was that something just felt wrong. Once I realized I could breathe, my main issue was that I was afraid that I'd have to call someone to come and help me, and I kept thinking "I don't want to go to the hospital again, I don't want to go to the hospital again."  I don't know why I kept thinking that, because I couldn't pinpoint anything that would make me have to go to the hospital. It was very, very weird.  Thankfully by Sunday morning, I felt more myself. I made it to church and was ok by the time Steve came home.  I still don't know what happened.

I do have one theory, and it may be very stupid, but it's the only one I have.

As I have mentioned before, I have degenerative disk disease and that causes constant, relentless back pain. It isn't debilitating, thankfully, but it keeps me from doing a lot of physical activities because one wrong move and my arms go numb and my spine sends signals to my shoulder and rib cage telling me that I could be dying. I already have a phobia of sudden heart attacks because that is how my dad died and apparently I was traumatized by that, so when my arms go numb and my chest hurts, well, that's just where my brain goes. It sucks donkey balls, because even when I can rationally think "that is not how a heart attack works" the lizard part of my brain says "Well, yeah, but what if you're wrong this time?" Also, the nerve shocks that I get through my back feel exactly the same as when I get startled. You know that creepy feeling like someone is looking at you from behind? It's like that, so I have a constant feeling of being stalked, which just adds on to the scary feeling. I think maybe I slept weird and pinched a nerve that set off a bunch of pain that my body didn't know how to handle all at once. I put an ice pack on my back, and it helped me calm down, so maybe it's all just nerve impulses that are triggering a fear response. It's all very stupid, I can say that with authority.

Oh, but the best part? Since then, it's like I have PTSD and anytime I've been alone (which even goes to being alone in a room) I start having mini panic attacks. I had a panic attack so massive that being by myself now scares me. It's so much fun. I can't live like that, though, because Steve has to travel for work and I sometimes have to be in room by myself, and I am a grown ass woman who shouldn't have to have a babysitter. I can't be afraid all of the time. That is not how I want to live my life.

SIGH. I'm hoping this goes away very soon, because I have a life to live and fun stuff to do in it. If there is one part of this that I can appreciate, it's that I am trying to fight against it instead of submitting to it. I cannot stress enough about how stupid I feel this all is. It makes me MAD. I hope I can get the source of whatever is causing this corrected.

So (for those of you still here reading this) I'm asking you to pray or send good vibes, or whatever you might do, that I can get this weird situation under control. I don't have time for this!!

BLOGGED AFTER THE FACT: PART 1 - HELL IS FULL OF SEMI TRUCKS

Hello, friends and random Internet people who've never been here before!

I went on an adventure last week!  Sara (one of my best friends in the world) and I have been wanting to go on a girl's only trip for some time now, and after talking about it for a year or two we finally decided to do it!

Sara, who is used to organizing things for her family, basically planned it for us.  I'm very grateful for that! She found a nice Air BnB apartment (this one, which was awesome and you should go and stay there too) which is located in New Smyrna Beach, FL.  I'd never even heard of New Smyrna Beach. It was charming and small, had all kinds of shops and restaurants, and it wasn't anything like Panama City Beach, which is a plus. Trust me.

My part of the adventure actually started on Thursday morning, because I was going to be driving down to Sara's house, which is located in Valdosta, Georgia.  I'll admit, I was a little nervous about driving all that way alone.  After getting my license, I was never allowed to take long trips by myself (I was quite sheltered. Heh.) and even when I became an adult, driving long distances my myself was heavily discouraged by my family.  I'd love to say that I thumbed my nose at them and went where I wanted anyway, but when you have people who you love and trust telling you all kinds of horrible things, it can get in your head. HOWEVER...I finally decided that I needed to be an adult and do this thing, because I'm way too old to have people telling me what I should and shouldn't do, don't you think?  (Yeah, 39 IS a little old to come to this conclusion. I know this. Bite me.)

At first the drive was fine. I had my audio novel going and my GPS directing me through some twisty little north/east Alabama roads.  I was so chill and wondering why I had waited so long to do this.  Then I hit I-75 and was transported into straight up flaming hell, and hell is full of semi-trucks.  I've driven on interstates before, and I've driven next to 18 wheelers, but I swear to you, almost the moment I merged onto I-75 I was surrounded by these things, and I was not prepared. It doesn't help that this particular road is very wide and full of traffic, all going much faster than I had anticipated, but Brunhilde is a small car, and being surrounded by giant trucks unnerved me.  I know it wasn't anything horrible, really, but since it was the first time driving I-75 myself around all the traffic, I was very nervous.  Actually, I did pretty well, all things considered.  I managed to make it to Atlanta and take the proper exit to the perimeter roads so that I didn't have to drive straight through the city (another level of hell altogether) and had just made it to the other side of Atlanta when I almost died.  It was my fault, because I didn't realize the lane beside me was a merging lane, and I was trying to speed up to get ahead of this big semi.  He sped up too, and I had to slam on my brakes to keep from getting destroyed.  It rattled me so badly that I had to take the next exit and sit in a parking lot until I could stop shaking.  Once I got back on the road, and further away from Atlanta, things got a little better.  It was still unnerving to get surrounded by semi-trucks, but at least the traffic thinned out a little.  After that, my main issue was that the last leg of my journey was 127 miles of straight road, and I'd catch myself sort of zoning out while watching the lines go by.  I know road hypnosis, but I'd never experienced it like that before.  Bleh.

Anyway, as you can see, I finally made it to Sara's house in one piece!  Thank goodness!  She and her family had just moved into this house last summer, and so it was all brand new and gorgeous.  Her three dogs tried to eat me the minute I stepped into the house, but they are all small, so I wasn't too worried.  We sat and talked until Ron, her husband, came home and then we all set out to Parent Teacher night at Sara's stepson's high school.  Yep, I went to parent teacher night.  I told them I'd just pretend I was Sara's sister wife if anyone asked.  Ron liked that idea, haha! When we got back, we all sat around and talked until bed time.  Sara and I needed sleep because we were heading out to Florida the next day!  Woo-Hoo!

UGH. MORE FEELINGS

Today I woke up out of a dead sleep in a complete panic. 

I've been waking up this way, every day, for going on almost three months now.  I wrote a post about this a bit ago and I'd hoped that things would ease up, but they haven't.  It's not just a brief feeling of panic that goes away quickly, but something that starts almost the minute that I open my eyes and just gets worse until I manage to climb out of bed and force myself to think of other things while I'm getting ready for work. Even then, it follows me around.  I HATE IT.

I decided to try and figure this out when it had been going on for a few weeks.  If I could understand what is bothering me enough to cause the panic attack, maybe I could fix that and make it stop.  So I started to keep a mental log every morning when it happened to try and get a better understanding of it. But it isn't that cut and dry. When I first wake up, I'm not thinking of anything in particular, especially not anything that would be worrying me. Almost immediately my hands and chest start to tingle, my heart starts to race, I can't breathe, I get hot all over and my skin starts to crawl.  There is literally no thought in my head causing it, it just starts for no reason. However, apparently the way my brain works is like it's thinking "Ok, I'm panicking, and I can't panic without a reason! Here is a reason!" and then the things that bother me come crashing in on me.  And the stuff I am suddenly anxious about, like: I worry about my brother's surgery and if it will be successful and how my mom is going to handle it, or the fact that I have a close friendship that seems to have changed in some fundamental way that I don't understand with zero explanation and that concerns me, or that I have another very good friend who is sick and  may not get better, not to mention my general job situation.  All of those things are certainly things that are concerning, but none of them should be waking me up in a blind panic in the morning and following me around all day.

Look, I know I sound crazy.  I know this.  Thing is, I don't really think this is a thing that is all in my head.  The fact that I'm waking up tabula rasa and still in a panic, before the thought of the day crashes in on me, must mean that something physical is going on, right?  Some kind of weird chemical thing?  I don't know. I should probably see a doctor, but what do I say?  If something hurts, that's easy to explain, but when you say "constant panic attacks" all they want to do is drug the personality out of you.  I hope that doesn't happen. 

Sigh.  Anyway, sorry to complain.  I just hate feeling like this.  I'd like to feel normal again and not worry beyond what a normal person does.  I know people who don't give a damn about anything, or if they do, they don't let it get to them too badly.  I wish I could be like that.  I stopped trying to avoid feeling stuff and look what happened!  Feelings are bullshit.  I was right.  People don't have patience with your feelings.  They don't want to hear about them and they certainly don't want to get involved. They just avoid you til you feel better, or at least until you stop talking about them.  I don't want to bother people.  I know I'm bothering you right now, gentle reader, but I'd like to think that if you are here, you care a little bit. Heh. 

Thank you for listening.  I hope this goes away soon.

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

OK, so adventure seems like a strong word to use here, but whatever.  Anything can be an adventure, right? :)

I'm on my way (or, at least I will be soon) to the financial workshop I mentioned in my last post.  Whee.  I finally got in touch with someone who would tell me where I needed to go when I got there, so that helped me out tremendously!  Now I know where to check in and where the thing is going to be. 

I've realized that I am not as laid back as most people would be about attending something like this, or at least that's the impression I'm getting.  I don't like not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing!  If this were a vacation or something I wouldn't care. I don't worry about about schedules for that kind of thing.  However, someone paid for me to go to this workshop and I'd rather not be moseying in two hours late to something because I'd been circling the compound, going from building to building asking where I'm supposed to be.  It's been 17 years sense I've been to this place, and since I was in a big van with a bunch of other teenagers, I wasn't exactly paying attention to what was going on when we got there. 

I think I'm way more anxious about this sort of thing than I need to be, honestly.  Part of it is that I don't tend to drive long distances by myself very often (and ever since I ended up in that person's barn, I'm not sure I trust the GPS completely.)  The next part is that I'm worried it'll all be over my head.  Damnit, Jim, I'm an artist, not an accountant!  What if I can't retain anything?  The other part is that I'm a complete flake and I'm worried that I'm going to do something dumb.  That probably speaks volumes about my self esteem, but seriously, I do dumb stuff all of the time without realizing it and I don't want to do anything that reflects badly on my church.  I'm rarely ever appropriate, especially when I get awkward, and since I'm going to be in a room full of people I don't know, I'm going to get awkward. Oy.  Can you get excommunicated from the Southern Baptist Convention?

This is the first time I've ever traveled for work, for any reason.  I've never even stayed in a hotel by myself before, so this is a whole new thing for me!  All I want is to get there and back safely, and hopefully learn the hastared computer program/financial stuff in the process.

Anyways, so there you go!  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  I'll either come back a tiny bit more comfortable with the idea of dealing with our church's finances, or I will have been chased from the place with torches and pitchforks. 

Of course, maybe I'll just skip the whole thing and make a detour to Auburn to watch football with some friends.  Would that be so wrong? :)

IRRATIONAL FEARS -- 1

I grew up in a very small town. I'm not sure you can even call where I lived a "town" exactly. I lived on a cattle farm on the outskirts of the small town, Athens, AL, if you want to get technical. Because of that, any time we went into Athens proper, we referred to it as "Goin' to town." Specifically, we called going to Wal-Mart "Goin to town." I know that probably sounds silly if you didn't grow up in a place similar to where I did. But, I digress.

Goin' to town was an event. It isn't like now, where I live a literal few minutes from just about everything I need and will just jump in the car and go. Going to town took preparation. We put on nicer clothes, fixed our hair and make-up and made sure we were decent before going to town. It was just the way we did it back then.

These days, I still have the habit of making myself decent before heading out to Wal-Mart or Target or wherever, but I'm not as scrupulous as I used to be. If I'm in the middle of a project and need something, it's likely I'll just slap on lip-gloss and a hat, make sure I'm decently clothed and go get what I need. I'm careful, you see.

However, there have been rare days when I've really, really needed something and didn't have the time to even reach for the lip gloss. I've gone to Wal-Mart in my PJ's, or in clothes that I have pulled out of the hamper, with crazy hair and no makeup. These are the days that worry me.

As careful as I am about not looking homeless, even when going to Wal-Mart, I've got this fear that one day, when I'm in the middle of some crisis when I need something badly enough that I have abandoned all pretenses of civilized behavior, someone is going to take my picture and I'm going to end up on People of Wal-Mart.