Anxiety and Me.

If anyone is vaguely familiar with this blog, they know that I've had anxiety in various degrees for the past several years-and, trust me, it's starting to get old.

I've always been a high strung person-like the time in college I was convinced I had HIV after making out with a stranger. Yeah, not cute high-strung, but crazy high-strung. I saw a psychiatrist at that time who suggested I take 5-htp and realize I may just be one of those people who is "wound too tight."

My "panic" attacks started in earnest the summer I finished my first year of law school. I had just sold my dad's house, bought a new house, planned a wedding in four months, and got married. My dad had only been dead for 2 years and (we didn't know it at the time) but my sister was sinking deeper into alcoholism (which she would eventually seek treatment for). I was drinking too much. One night I jumped out of a deep sleep, running around the room screaming at my husband that my heart had stopped. It was funny. Until these feelings persisted.

I became obsessed with my heart, my head, my health. During the past few years I've used alcohol to calm myself down and my anxiety has peaked and waned. Which was fine, until it wasn't.

When I turned 27, something happened to my hormones and I wanted a baby. Like big time baby time. Now, I'm crazy-my husband is crazy-and we're all crazy. But I had graduated from law school, passed the bar, and finally had a job that paid the bills and had amazing benefits. My husband was back in school full-time-and doing well-and I started to think we could actually do this baby thing.

But he had some conditions-1. Get a second dog, so our first dog doesn't get lonely (which totally doesn't make sense to me, but he's obsessed with dogs so I could deal), and 2. No more panic attacks.

ugggg...fair enough. But I realized my stupid anxiety had become part of me. I had quit smoking, and cut down on drinking-especially since I spent a week at Hazelden in the family program crying about my sister and hearing all of the horrible things alcohol did to people's lives from addicts who had done things like chop their own hand off in cocaine induced psychotic episodes (yeah, they don't fuck around at Hazelden) But my anxiety, I was like, "I can't quit you." I used my anxiety to get out of everything-seeing friends, family events, work. "oh, i'm sorry I can't go. I have anxiety. I'm special. " It was driving a huge panic shaped wedge between my husband and I, which would make me more anxious. I blamed him, he blamed me, and it all ended with me in a ball on the bathroom floor taking my pulse. I was totally living the American dream.

So, when I learned I had to fly to Baltimore for work I decided to see my (western) Dr. and get on some good old pharmaceuticals. Basically, all I had to say was "I feel anxious to fly" and she shoved a free sample bottle of Celexa in my hands, told me to take it for a month, and see her again. "Great", I thought, "a solution in a bottle."

I got home and proudly displayed my little bottle of chemical happiness to my husband, "Look, I'm trying." I started the Celexa and everything seemed fine-expect for these little electric shocks that seems to rumble through my brain every now and then. But at least I was starting to walk my dog without breaking into a cold sweat.

About a week into taking Celexa, I feel asleep on the couch while my husband was bent over his astronomy books in the kitchen. I'm not sure how this happened, but I woke up on the kitchen floor shaking and whimpering in the midst of a FULL BLOWN PANIC ATTACK. Now, I thought I'd been having panic attacks all along. Oh no. My shit was getting schooled in real life panic. Every single ounce of adrenaline in my body was released at the same time-I had broken out into a crazy sweat, my hands were shaking, my skin was buzzing, I felt so unreal and was convinced beyond all else that I was about to die. I grabbed ice from the freezer and ran outside. I could not calm down. I begged my husband to take me to the emergency room, "You don't understand", I hissed "I am going to die." He was pissed. Super pissed. Even though it was 2:00 in the morning he called my mom, "She's wants me to take her to the emergency room. I can't take this. I have a test tomorrow." My mom got on the phone, "Are you stupid? What's going on." "I'm going to the emergency room" I couldn't breath. My husband said, "Fine! Drive yourself." So, in this state I jumped into our car and started to drive. We live a mile from the hospital and 2 miles from my mom. My mom called, "What are you doing?" Me: "Going to the emergency room." Her: "No. What do you expect there? You're coming to my house."

Somehow logic got the better of me and I went to my mother's home, at 27, soaking wet with sweat and convinced my husband was going to divorce me, but more convinced that I was about to keel over.

My step-dad is 8 years older than my mom, so they have things like blood pressure cuffs at their house. I was still buzzing, shaking, totally felt like I was losing it. My mom slapped the cuff on my arm and gave me some water. My blood pressure was 200 over 140 and my pulse was 120. "Oh my God, I'm dying. See this is proof, I'm dying." My mom snapped at me, "Shut up. You're not dying. Lay on the floor, and start breathing." For several minutes I tried to take deep breaths into a paper bag, while alternating between telling my mom that she would feel bad after I was dead. This whole thing would make us laugh later-but would also convince me that I really couldn't live like this anymore. My blood pressure finally started to go down, my pulse slowed, and the tide of adrenaline receded. I felt like an idiot.

The next days the waves of panic continued, but at least I knew they wouldn't kill me. I called my doctor and told her what happened.

Me: I woke up last night in the middle of a real panic attack. It was terrifying.
Her: Oh, that's normal with drugs like Celexa. Things get worse before they get better.
Me: Really ? I wish you would have told me because this is awful.
Her: I'll write you out a script for Xanax. Just pop one if you start to have panic.
Me: You're giving me another drug to counteract another drug?
Her: It should just be short term.
Me: (What the fuck?) O.k.

That's when I realized I was a dumb ass for ever seeing a Western doctor for this. I mean, these type of drugs have a place for those who are suicidal, or suffering from severe mental illness, but they aren't for a person like me who has become habituated-addicted even-to anxiety.

this is when I went back to Mayfield-my functional medicine guru.

Here's what he has me doing:

1. Emotional Freedom Technique-this weird tapping on different parts of your body while telling yourself you're anxious. It looks totally odd, but seems to work. Look it up on YouTube. It's bizarre.

2. Amino Acid therapy-He explained this to me as being "basic chemistry." I'm essentially (no pun intended) helping my body make the "stuff" that makes me feel good. It's working, in the sense that I'm starting to feel strangely back to normal. Cynical and jaded, instead of constantly white knuckling it.

2. GABA-GABA makes me sleepy and feel tingly, but it's another amino acid which brings me down -in a calm way, not a depressed way.

3. Lemon Balm and Theanine-I'd never heard of using lemon balm for panic, but I've been using this from when I start to feel like I'm in the verge of panic. It really works.

4. Centiol-A powder mixture of magnesium and Inositol-which calms the nervous system and completely knocks me out for the night-no more midnight panic attacks.

He also told me that panic can be an addiction. Your brain builds up pathways, making panic familiar and easy to slip into.

So far, I feel better. Not perfect, but things are getting easier. I find that I'm better able to rationalize with my panicked mind rather than letting it take over. And yes, even though this most recent, and honest attempt, started with a desire to convince my husband I was well enough to get pregnant-I realized that I want to get this under control because I deserve to be here and I deserve to enjoy things while I am.

It's been a year...

Re-reading some of my posts I can't believe how honest I was. What once was housed in bedside drawers and shoved in closets becomes the purview of the entire world (if they so wish) to stumble upon your little blog. The thing I love about the internet-how interesting to let someone create their life for you (their pictures, their updates, their poetry) becomes not only how they wish/hope to create their reality for you-but also how you interpret and read their reality. You don't see them on their shitty days, on their crying days, on their nothing is going right days. You don't see how someone else may see them as a selfish, narcissistic asshole.

You just see them. Perfecting themselves. Molding it.

And I love it so much-I just might keep doing it myself.

This summer.

All of this nice weather started so fast-I feel like I can't enjoy it. Time is just this wave crashing over me- in and out, water pushing against my lungs, I rise up to the surface and take a breath, and back under. Each day-each moment.

Lately I've been thinking about having a blog, and what it even means. How much of yourself do you write about-how much do you disclose. Is it better to just have a journal-or do you need an audience (waiting) for you to unfurl yourself to? Audience. Yeah. right.

I saw my uncle the other day and he said, "Sara. You're just an open book, totally open-everything is there for people to see."

And I went to a psychic-and she told me, "When I tried to look into you and get some information-you started to show me around your LITERAL house-you redirected me from who you really are-trying to put on a good show. You'll be really good at what you do with how well you compartmentalize."

Maybe I am putting on a show-carefully crafting words. Waiting for them to hit you the right way-hoping that you will feel affected. See me. SEE me.

Why do I want you to look when I don't even know what's there?

Procrastinating.

I really know there's a lot to do when I'm tempted to "blog". Is blogging becoming outdated now-going the way of Myspace and whatever else used to be cool, but now isn't. It's not cool to just have an amorphous blog that's not related to some topic or theme. I should totally have a legal theme or young lawyers theme or graduating with a shitload of debt and chronicling my poor ass life theme. I'm just too lazy and I always get too distracted with surfing the Internet for celebrity gossip or free feminist porn (which is really hard to find-I guess if you want to feel morally justified in looking at porn you're going to have to pay for it).

As I've started to move into my summer, I've noticed my OCD really flaring up. Since I now have time to read I've spent hours on the Hennepin County library website searching through books I've heard of and wanted to read or just searching for books that sound appealing-and I can't even judge them by their cover since I only have the titles to go by. That's how I end up with books like, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Changing Old Habits for Good" and "The Advocate's Devil" I left the library yesterday afternoon with a pile of 30 books, embarrassed by my library greed, as I stood behind a small child with curly hair and sticky fingers standing on a step stool, waiting to check myself out. The little girl was painstakingly checking out each book, not understanding that she had to put the bar code under the damn red laser thingy, before that satisfying beep would sound and the book would be hers for a few weeks. I was fumbling with my huge pile of books trying to shove "DON'T PANIC: How to Stop Anxiety Attacks for Good" to the bottom, so I didn't look more like the anxious skeezed out crazy lady that I have obviously become.

I get home and sorted my books into piles that don't really make sense. General books about food and cooking in one pile, self-help/reference in another (ranging from a memoir of a women who disparages all forms of self-help advice spending a year taking self-help classes, to eating for my metabolism) It's like I don't even read the books I just spend hours picking them out and meticulously organizing them into piles by the bed. My husband, in the middle of making dinner last night, came into the bedroom while I was doing this. Small stacks of books on the floor by my side of the bed, next to the "Total Yoga Kit" and Yoga ball I never use, and the laundry baskets full of clothes-some of them folded others balled up after I threw them on top of the folded piles. He just stared at me and said, "You're so messy. With all of your piles. Are you a hoarder?" I looked around the house and realized I do have little piles everywhere. I get so interested and obsessed with things. I looked up at him slightly shocked. Like he saw me for the first time doing something I've been doing all of my life. All of my private moments and rituals are coming unbound to the point that he is able to witness them.

I sit and think about all the places I want to go. San Francisco and wine country-touring through vineyards on an antique train car. Prince Edward Island in Canada to fulfill my childhood dream of visiting the place where Anne of Green Gables lived (I've always wondered if it was my huge, unruly hair, tendency towards chubbiness, and my overbite that led to a life of utter nerdiness or if my early tastes in literature destined me to a life of unhipness) A vacation on the east coast exploring the haunts of our founding fathers. Taking my husband to Spain where I lived what were some of the most glorious months of my life-drinking Sangria with him in the Plaza Mayor on a warm summer evening. I will take out every book on yogic practices and lifestyles and meditation practices and nutrition and just constantly want to absorb, absorb, absorb. My mind is moving so fast that the only way I can seem to slow it down is through alcohol or sex. Wow. How novel. I must be the only person on earth that uses those two vices to achieve some sense of being in the present.

All of this, all of my piles-literal and figurative-push this fear I have of not having enough time. And this fear keeps me stuck and I don't do anything. It's not money, it's not being busy with other things. I have to accept that there is not enough time. Not enough time to do everything that I think would be fulfilling and exciting. But all this thinking about it and planning for a future I don't even know if I can finance prevents me from experiencing the things I am able to. Right now.

My little-teeny house in Robbinsdale. I have to tear myself away from the paint peeling around the window sills and the stains on the roof. Here I am. My own little piece of home. I can keep it clean and beautiful-it's not opulent and never will be. But it's my own.

Reading about yoga, meditation, being present is wonderful-but it's not the practice. When I don't slow down and sit with my fears and my breath and feel all of my weight-instead of judging it- that is when the anxiety comes rushing up out of my abdomen and comes crushing down on my chest. All the planning and thinking in the world will not take away from the sacred and eternal/internal reality that is my breath flowing in and out of my body-a breath that will someday cease-but a breath that moves through me now.

Being alive is a scary thing. Especially when you step away from your piles of stuff and begin living it.

Remember the Time.

I haven't updated in awhile. Sorry? If anyone is still checking.

I've been busy with finals, working full-time, and figuring out if I still want to be an attorney.

Lately there have been a whirlwind of things going on around me. My best friend since we were twelve is having twin boys!! I was already excited to become the drunken auntie-now I'll be the drunken auntie x 2. Just remembering how little we were-growing up together-and now she's going to me a mama. Life-speeds along doesn't it?

Speaking of life-and two that have passed-I can't believe that both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died on the same day. I grew up with Michael Jackson's music. I remember when I was little my mom used to put on a Michael Jackson record to calm my sister down-it was the only thing that would get her to stop crying at times.

I know that through the years Michael Jackson became "Wacko Jacko" and had a totally fucked up life. I want to remember him as he was-a really talented musician and singer who I think (and forgive me) really did want to heal the world and make it a better place. Here he is-in all of his early glory.



I don't want to write about life and how it's over so fast and blah, blah, blah. It's always on my mind anyway. We get just a glimpse. I want to spend it in the arms and presence of the people I love, listening to good music, and feeling thankful for every second of awareness I have.

God speed.

31 Again.

Today is my husband's 31st.  Into his 30's they say.  It will go by in a flash. Much faster than his 20's.  

Birthdays.  They surround our relationship.  I met my husband when I was 20 and fresh back from Spain-wearing these hip red "trainers" and totally 20 pounds skinnier than I am now.  He was dating my friend Leah.  

Ah, the good old days. 

My husband came to my 21st birthday.  Of course I didn't know he was my husband at the time.  Although it seems like such a short time ago-in that moment-a life of domesticity seemed way off-it went by in a flash!  

We started dating, and by that I mean "dating" right after his 26th birthday.  I was still 21.  Oh, but so stupid.  I am still stupid.  But maybe the kind of stupid I was then was helpful to our relationship.  Because I kept seeing him.  

Even at 21 I felt like-this weird awkwardness-that I still feel with him-but also THIS I want to take you home and keep you forever. 

Other people have told me this about him-Oh, he's so comfortable-he's so easy to talk to- and I see how you could feel that-I did. 

But it was more-Hello you-here we are-and WHOA-we bought a house together and got married. 

I loved my husband before he was my husband.  And I loved him more after.  

carrying on-he is 31 today.  5 years after we met.  

Why do I worship my relationship so?  

Because.  Life is messy.  Professional relationships are built on a certain amount of misrepresentation.  Family relationships are operating out of years of dysfunction.  Friendships-although invaluable-end at the door and good-bye.  Friendships are extremely necessary-and often help you live longer-but that person at the end of the line-when it's all good. 

They are who you COME home to.   Because they are home. 

That's why I totally glorify relationships that last a lifetime and the partners die within hours/months/weeks of each other.  

You operate as a unit-but this cool family/sleeping with each other-unit.  I don't know. 

I'm just spewing smashed words. 

I so believe in monogamy and marriage.  Everyone should be allowed to get married and everyone should. 

Because when this whole fucking world is against you-having someone stand up and hang their hat with yours-in front of whatever community is important to you-it's pretty strong. 

It at least gives you someone to hold onto while you're waiting to die.  

Sometimes morbid thoughts make you very sentimental for great romance.  

I'm just beginning to accept that I'm awesome.

My high-school boyfriend, who I was totally in love with and lost my virginity to on FUCKING prom night ( I know-What the fuck) was like a total douche in a lot of ways, but I was young and you know-stupid.

But he was a good guy on some levels and super sexy to me for some reason (DAMN you oxytocin) so I could never really get him out of my system. Finally, a few years ago (read: after I got married) we became "friendly" like as friends that speak every couple of months, but also went through a period of life together where they were like licking out each others assholes.

Anyway, he's got like the HUGEST ego That only a Leo narcissist could, but most of the time I find it fairly amusing-although when I was obsessed with his every move I found it incredibly destructive-to say the least. But he's always had this thing where he thought he was better and smarter than everyone around him. Even his elders.

Now, I don't know if it's a gender thing, or a me questioning myself thing, but I never got him being all on his high horse. Well, I guess I got it to the extent I rationalized it as a result of him being mentally ill/raised my a mother who constantly praised him while she regaled us with stories of her acid dropping hippy days (Seriously, this dude used to mutter in his sleep from all the Lorazapam he ingested-she loved to feed her kids pharmaceuticals) I mean really. I was like-why do you think you're all that? You seem like a pretty huge nerd, weirdo to me.

Back to the present-we were talking the other day. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda. How are you? , What are you up to? And he's like, "I'm just beginning to accept I'm awesome. I mean I always knew I was good. But I mean, I'm really awesome. At my job, life, etc."

Me? I'm like barf, gag me, you're so full of yourself, good thing you have a picture perfect dick to back up that huge ego-you know. Just like-REALLY this guy is deluded.

But today-at my volunteership-I was listening to the volunteer lawyers talk to a group of women. I'm so used to being in this world full of people training to be lawyers-but we have no clients. OUR WHOLE GOAL of works-and I don't know how to talk to people. And the way this lawyer was explaining the law and the job to this group of women-it HIT me. BAM. SHAzam!

I'm not just paying for the smarts, for the intellect part of it (where I feel, frankly, pretty fucking weak). I'm paying for access to a community, where I know people, and network and act with integrity and build a reputation. It all depends on ME. Just me SISTAH. I gotta work the rope line, flatter, call shots, and do it with a shit load of class and just the right amount of aggression and little bit of brain power to round it all out. FUCK! No wonder the law isn't an easy job. And no wonder, for so long, it belonged to men. It's built for men. You have to be KING COCK in the law, strut your shit, talk the dude langauge, and leave no doubt in your mind or anyone elses just how fucking awesome you are.

I won't even go into how as a feminist things need to change and gender rolls and bullshit. But here's this. If I'm entering this legal world-which really was just opened up to women 150 years ago after 100's of years of monopoly by men-I'm going to have to learn how to play the game.
Which means I have to get all liberal feminist on this legal ass and gain full access before I can change it from the inside out. Or at least so I can make a ton of money.

Which means I need to play up my strengths. And get ready to shout from the fucking roof-tops, " You know, I'm beginning to accept that I'm awesome. I knew I was good. But I'm awesome."

Because, half the battle is walking into a room, and sending out that message and not giving them any other reason to think otherwise.

So thanks. Thanks high-school boyfriend. For teaching me this weird lesson. Sometimes taking life by the balls, and telling it you're better than most, even if it isn't true, really works in driving you towards success.

If the law won't work for me with how I think as a woman, I'm going to start to act like a man-and think I'm and the mother fucking shit regardless.

Whoa. It felt good to get that off my chest. And my balls.