Yesterday is gone

Yesterday was one of my anxiety days.  One of the days where I wake up with my chest hurting and spend the entire day feeling like I’m being strangled. On anxiety day, every time I breathe in, I feel a wave of dizziness.  It’s a pretty regular occurrence,anxiety day, but that doesn’t keep it from catching me by surprise and kicking my butt when it comes.

I’ve never told anyone about anxiety day, except DH and my sister.  Because it’s me at my worst.  Because I like to focus on the good.  But on anxiety day it is hard to find anything good that does not seem poisoned with fear.

On anxiety day, everything seems wrong and horrible and hopeless.  I know that even if my life was problem free, I’d probably still come up with something to be worried about on anxiety day.  Since I actually do have problems,it can be pretty bad. I tell myself my viewpoint is skewed, but it doesn’t make the strangling pain go away.  I’ve tried singing hymns during the day to cheer myself up.  I do calm down while I’m singing, but as soon as the song is over, anxiety smacks me in the face again, and I feel like I’m fighting a great battle just to not drown.  Sometimes anxiety day lasts for two or three days.

If there was a way that I could just leave until it was over, my family wouldn’t suffer as much.

Because when I’m freaking out, I don’t always speak in the kindest tone to the kiddie pies.

The DH can tell I’m not happy.  He wants me to be happy, so he asks what is wrong.  I say “it’s nothing.”  What I mean is, there is nothing he can do.  The DH can be pretty persistent.  When I’m asked for the 4th time what’s wrong, I forget that I’m suppressing my emotions for the day.  I stop answering, “It’s nothing” and let the DH know his top ten failings and why no woman should be expected to put up with him.  Also I let him know that every little thing he does is irritating to me and why can’t he just go breathe in a different room.  Fairness does not enter in here on anxiety day.

I’ve been learning about quantum mechanics (thank you, youtube) because I’ve always wanted to learn about it, and because I want to learn about it before the movie about Steven Hawking comes out in November.  So far what I’ve learned is that matter moves like a wave, but when we try to measure or observe it, it changes.  I’ve learned that a particle in the universe spins, but it doesn’t know which way it is spinning until we measure it.  When we measure it, it spins the way we set up the equipment to measure the spin.  If we change the equipment, we change the spin.

So our expectations affect the universe and how it behaves.  I’m not saying I understand it very well yet, but it sure lends a lot of credibility to the whole positive affirmations idea.  I know that I’d rather be happy than sad, and I might as well choose to believe in happiness.  Most of the time, I’m pretty good at happy.  But I haven’t managed to do happy on anxiety day.  (although hanging out at a friend’s house can distract me from it for a few hours-that’s as close as I’ve gotten).  It’s like on anxiety day, my brain is broken.  Happy and hopeful aren’t settings that my equipment is capable of on anxiety day.

Maybe one of these days, maybe I’ll manage to be civil and cheerful on anxiety day.  Maybe I’ll figure out how to use physics to fix it.  Maybe anxiety day won’t come back next month.

For now, I’m just glad that yesterday is over and my kiddie pies are so quick to forgive and forget.  I’m glad the DH is pretty resilient and that making up after a fight is really fun.  I’ve go hold of hope again.