Last night was a disaster. Bed transformed into that scary place once more. Terror and dread flooded my body over and over again as I lay there battling the feelings that belong in the past and yet won’t leave me alone. Every time I felt myself on the edge of sleep I jolted awake in a panic, my heart clenching and stomach lurching. I took a double dose of diazepam for the anxiety and prescription strength codeine left over from my recent trip to hospital with the pain flare because I had super bad period cramps. Nothing had any effect. The cramps were probably the worst period pains I’ve had in my life, apart from the first period after the abortion I had several years ago. The anxiety just went on and on. And when I finally dozed a little from around 3am trauma dreams cycled through my brain on an endless loop. Luckily I was able to work at home today so after driving my daughter to her friend’s house so she could get a lift to school I was able to sit with my laptop on the sofa and didn’t have to face talking to anyone.
The anxiety continued most of the day. I did manage to get some work done, not what I had planned to do, but things that needed doing and that will clear space later this week for more important things, once I am hopefully in a better place. I reached out to my acupuncturist via text, asking if he had space today. He was full but I can go on Friday if I am still this dysregulated. I don’t even feel that bad consciously, my brain is fairly calm, but my body is screaming at me that something is really wrong. My body tells the story of the things I would rather not know. My body is the proof. My body scares me. K tells me my body is not scary it is just trying to tell us big things, but I still find it scary how tight and painful and locked down it gets.
I did manage some yoga at lunchtime which helped a little. I made healthy food for me and Nina and collected her from swimming training and helped her prepare her ingredients to make a fruit fusion in food and nutrition tomorrow. On the surface I look okay, but bubbling underneath is a melting pot of unfelt emotions and just absolute fucking agonising pain. One of the texts to my acupuncturist, who I’ve worked with on and off for 14 years now and who a few years ago witnessed my first realisations of all that I went through growing up, was basically “I want my Mum”. This is what all this is about isn’t it, needing something I’ve never had. That fucking gaping hole in me. I don’t want to be like this, I don’t want to care or need or want that elusive thing I’ve never had. And K going just throws it all in my face – I’m not hers, I don’t belong to anyone the way I need to. And it makes me ashamed and then I bury the feelings and then they explode out of me in the form of anxiety.
“Maximum self-soothe” is a phrase I read recently and is something I want to adopt at times like this, rather than the self-abandonment which is my default response. It feels like I am falling apart and yet I am keeping going and keeping everything together. I wish I could just sit and howl with the pain of losing K and not having a mum some times, really lose myself in it, but there is never time and space to do this. I want to reach out to K and yet she can’t help me because I have to go through this. I know this and she knows this. I know if she could take this pain away from me she would.
I hate this anxious state. I am scared I won’t sleep again tonight. I’ve switched my phone off and have a sleeping tablet to take soon. I am going to read some of the wonderful novel I am reading that is one of those books that feels familiar and still takes you someplace new. I am going to tell myself it won’t always be like this. I am going to remind the parts who are freaking out that it isn’t always like this. Anxiety is a fairly rare visitor to my life, I usually am just straight to hypoarousal, and I know this phase will pass. But being stuck in it is still so horrible and makes me feel so incapable of living and healing and keeping going.
Dancing in the Rain 