An Old Foe

It is so mysterious how all the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and environmental aspects of a life converge together to create each unique human being. If the tiniest of things had changed, a meeting that never happened, a conversation that turned a different way, something about the individual could forever be altered. Each factor plays on the other. A physical prediliction might remain dormant if not for an environmental or emotional factor. However, none of us knows really who we might have been if some factor had changed in our past. Anxiety is an old issue for me. I believe it to be a physical prediliction..something missing in the chemicals of my brain that make me prone to it. Medicine helps to keep it under control, up to a point. I think a serious of events in my life; betrayals of trust, dysfunctional relationships, and the handful of times my anxiety turned out to be justified have combined at times to help it flare out of control. It has been a part of who I am as long as I can remember. As a child and a young adult, it seemed that the things that made me anxious were reasonable, even when they obviously were not. When I remember keeping my husband up all night once in the 80's because I was certain the Russians were sending missiles to blow us all up, I cringe with embarrassment. Not because I was afraid and anxious, but because I thought my fear was reasonable. Although I have lived with anxiety for over 50 years, it still sneaks up on me. It starts like a suspicion. A look, gesture, or comment out of place and my mind seizes on it. At the time, it doesn't seem abnormal to be concerned. Then as it turns over in my mind, I think of all the possible reasons for whatever it is I have noticed, and when I finally hit on one that seems to explain and validate my concerns, I fixate on it until I have to confront it. The fear of confrontation is not as great as the fear of continuing to live with the uncertainty of whether or not the anxiety is justified. I don't know why that scares me, accept that sometimes I really do feel like I am crazy. Confronting the fear helps me to come back to normalcy. The first 45 years or so of my life I was not medicated, and my family lived through the anxiety with me. It did affect everyone around me, positively and negatively. Most of my siblings seem to think of me as a silly woman because of it. One sibling understands, as he fights the same demons. My husband has been wonderful about it since the beginning. He sat through many any all nighter with me, keeping me company until the sun came up and the fears dissipated. Darkness makes the anxiety worse, as does separation. It starts as I said, as a suspicion, and I don't recognize what is coming until it is too late. It hits me in the stomach, like someone punched me. Sometimes I have doubled over with the force of the sick feeling in my stomach. The fear grabs ahold, especially if I have not had my medication. The medication makes it bearable, but sometimes just barely. Sometimes I do recognize it and I go to bed after taking something to help me sleep. If I can shut my brain off with a few hours of sleep, I can avoid the obsessive part of the cycle. I do not always recognize it. It is sneaky. Sometimes it still seems to be a reasonable concern when it first starts. If I don't recognize it early on and get caught up in the throes of it, I will not recognize it until I say or do something that affects someone close to me in a negative way. I become that person that hangs on a little too tight, wanting more from others than they have the capacity to give. Other times I may be the person that questions another's motives, or become so fearful that I have to "go underground" for a while, just not deal with anyone except a very few, completely trusted individuals. Even so, I am fortunate. As a child, I could not communicate the anxiety I felt. I could not explain to anyone why I was afraid. At that time, problems such as this were not really well understood even if I had been able to explain. Still, I was loved by enough people that I managed to survive into adulthood. Once I met my husband, I began to experience what it meant to be able to confide in someone and not have them tell me I was silly. The man sat up with me so many nights, playing cards, or scrabble, watching tv, or talking, anything to keep my mind off the fears that were crowding in on me. I truly believe that his patience, and the exhaustion of being a new mother are the two factors that helped me along the road to being able to cope with the anxiety. Sometimes, I was so tired, I was just too tired to be afraid! I am sure that as my children grew, the anxiety I felt affected them adversely. I know that there were times I was out of control anxious in regards to both my children, particularly when they hit young adulthood and began the process of separating from me. But having lived with me all their lives, they both also came away with an understanding that this anxiety thing was not totally within my control, and have as adults been very patient with their mother. They both married and their spouse also try to be patient, although it is a harder thing for them to really understand. Both of my children also suffer from some anxiety and sometimes I wonder if I had gotten help for myself and for them earlier, if it could have been avoided. I don't know how much of an affect earlier intervention would have had, and I will never know. What I do know now is that this old foe is part of who I was, and has helped to make me who I am. A fear of being hurt has lead to not wanting to hurt. A fear of being alone has led to wanting to let others know they are not alone. Recently a fear I have had is of losing my husband, and it has made me cherish him and try to appreciate every moment I have with him. It has led me to want to protect those in whom I recognize the same prediliction toward anxiety, to walk with them through it, until they can feel comfortable in whatever situation they find themselves in. This old foe still brings out the worst in me at times, but it has also had a hand at developing the best in me.

Oma Time

Today I went to a well-baby appointment with my granddaughter and her mother. I am amused at myself as I write this, because now that I have grandchildren, they are always greeted and/or referenced before their parents. I love their parents dearly, but the love I have for the children of my children is entirely different in nature. I am besotted by those little people, ages 18 and 6 months. I remember the babyhoods of my own children, and I was besotted with them too, but it was tempered with so many other concerns around providing for them and raising them to be good people. These babies I can just enjoy, as I try not to break too many parental rules. I wonder if all grandparents have as big a problem remembering the parental rules as I do. Sometimes I feel like a little child, admitting my transgressions when I mess up and waiting to see if I will be disciplined, or if mercy will be shown toward my grandparent fueled disobedience. Luckily, my children are very merciful, and I have only been in serious trouble a few times, although I am aware that I have caused severe frustration on multiple ocassions. The doctor's visit went well, my granddaughter got her shots, took them like they were minor irritants, and growled (yes, growled) in the most adorably fierce way at the doctor for having the temerity to stick her. She got what amounted to an A+ in her progress, and my daughter was happy. I just followed them around everywhere, even out to get weighed and measured, because I didn't want to miss anything. I am such a living cartoon of a grandparent, and I don't care. My grandson comes to visit Oma and PawPaw almost every weekend. He is such a joy to us. He follows us around, "helps" sweep the floor, bangs the pots around, dances and spins circles in the floor, and points to the door to go outside. He does not have many words he can use yet, but he makes his meaning known very well with hand movements. It would not surprise me if when he does start talking, he sounded like a college professor, merely having waited long enough to be able to form all the words correctly. Often I think about the little babies out there who are not well loved and protected, and think how I would like to take them all in and care for them. My husband would object, however. He loves children too, but is much more practical about the amount of work that they require. Still, I would like to do more, and feel so incredibly grateful that our babies are so well loved and have such a strong support system around them. We are truly blessed.

A Mother's Love

I asked her if she was excited about the grandchild that would arrive soon. She answered, "I don't know", so softly, and with such sad eyes. Then in the few words of english she knew, a few gestures, and eyes full of emotion, she conveyed to me the worries and broken dreams of a mother coming to terms with the choices of her child. I asked again about her son, and again, the softly spoken "I don't know" with her eyes averted. She is alone here in this country, having left her parents and her husband in the only other one she ever knew. Her children have no one else, and so she works to provide for her son and to help her daughter thru the tough stages of a marriage entered into out of necessity rather than love. I do not see her often, and have a hard time communicating with her verbally, but there are so many things to admire about this woman. She seems to have survived life by sheer determination and love for her children. She is concerned for others. Many offers of help have been turned down because she doesn't want our family to "lose money". She is generous, giving me a present everytime I see her. Last time it was a bundle of noodles. I feel honored that she would share what she has with me. She has a sense of humor, and when I first met her she laughed often with her children. Now her children are older, and they do not listen to her warnings about the choices they are making. They are like all children, they love her, but they don't think she understands, and in some ways they are right. This country is very foreign to her. The frustration of it all is draining the humor out of her soul. I like her, and I like her children. I too think as she, that the choices they are making will make their lives harder, and by extension, her life will be harder too. But like all mothers, she keeps going forward, working every day without fail, arguing with the children, sending money home to help her family in that faraway place, tending to her mentally challenged brother. I don't know how to help her, so I pray for her. Please Lord, help this woman. She has tried so hard. Please lord, find a way to lift her burdens and bring her happiness. Please give all around her the wisdom and the spirit they need to reach out to her and help her through her difficulties. Amen.

Caveats

The problem with writing a memoir in a public forum is that it is public. I started to write a post last night, and realized that I really have to think about others' privacy when posting my thoughts. Most of my family and friends would not want even positive's posted in public. Our little circle has not yet succumbed to the current trend of sharing intimate details of our lives with complete strangers. While we do some social networking, it is of the innocuous variety. None of us live our lives virtually, we are still old fashioned in that way. In fact, it makes me uncomfortable when something that should be private is made public on the internet, whether it is connected to me or not. That makes creating an online journal about my personal experiences and thoughts uncomfortable too. Yet it seemed to me to be a solution to a couple of problems. 1) I have a hard time writing things out long hand, because my brain is faster than my writing. It gets frustrating. Sometimes my hand catches up to my brain, only to find that my brain has forgotten the thought I wanted to write down! 2) I have a hard time keeping a journal saved on my hard drive, since I tend to be hard on my computers. Keeping it online seems to be the answer to both, but as soon as you put something online, it has the potential for becoming public, whether it is intended to be public or not. So, while writing in this forum, I will be careful, trying to express my thoughts without violating anyone's trust or my own privacy. There was a time when I would have thoughtlessly shared without considering others' feelings, but thankfully have come to know better. It wasn't that other peoples' feelings were not important to me. On the contrary, I have always cared deeply about how other people feel. It just never occured to me that if someone told me something, or shared an experience with me, that they would mind if I shared with someone else. It was a hard lesson learned for me. This journal is not meant to be a place to post gossip. What I see as an anecdote to be remembered cannot turn into something that may cause harm. So, I will be very careful in what I post. I have a couple of drafts pending and will post those as soon as I have rewritten them to take into account the privacy of others.

Starting

Last night my dreams were strange. I woke up around 3:30 or so in the morning, thinking I had heard a sound. The room felt strange, like someone was watching, and I had a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I missed having my husband with me, to cuddle up against, or whack on the arm to ask "What was that?" But he was a couple of hundred miles away, and I was by myself. So, I laid there, steadfastly refusing to turn over to see what had disturbed my sleep, running scenario's through my mind. The fatique from working and driving all day soon ended the game of scaring myself and I went back to sleep to awaken again to the memory of a dream. In this dream, I had sent off pictures to be made of the family. This is something that has been on my to do list for a long time, as I have many old family pictures that I want to have copied and then put in albums. In my dream, the pictures arrived in the mail. The first ones, taken 40 or more years ago, were a disappointment. They had a filmy quality, fuzzy and opague. The final few pictures were of recent family gatherings and they were bright and vibrant. The dream made me sad. It was a visual of how even the strongest memories fade over time. I want to do something to hold onto the memories. Not just my personal memories, but family history. The kind that is lost once each generation succeeds to the next. Thus, this blog, to consist of past memories, present happenings, and perhaps some dreams of the future.