Category: anxiety

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Five Days Good, Two Days Bad

teacupofwater2 Comments

I had the most amazing week, Mon – Fri! I managed to work on the house and it kept getting better and better. No restless nights, no hairtrigger temper, no weeping. I managed to clean for 5 days with an undercurrent of joyful happiness and lightness. It was amazing!

But that changed. Friday night I finally got to sleep at 2 a.m. All day Saturday I was near tears, anxious and insecure. We took 5 bins of leaves to the dump.

Sunday? Sunday morning started with a sort of fight with DH. My description to him of what I was going through was:

Having an invisible but red-hot plate of steel in my hands. I know you can’t see it and i know that if I react to it at all it will be puzzling and upsetting to you, so I’m trying really hard NOT to react to it. But it takes a lot of work. And I can’t let go of it, because it’s glued to me….

Which is actually pretty close. No, there’s no steel, hot or otherwise, but I have this INTENSE thing roiling away inside and I know it’s inappropriate. It’s highly charged emotions which are inappropriate. So, I was trying to NOT dump the emotional slop over onto my husband. I managed that, and didn’t quite.

I ended up driving away, saying, “I’ll be back in an hour.” But I got to the parking lot nearby, sat for a while with the motor running, and then drove home. I wasn’t dressed for being out. I had nowhere to go. And if I did go somewhere, I wouldn’t get out of my car, dressed as I was. So, I would just drive aimlessly for an hour? Hm. I don’t think so.

The rushing joy was wonderful. The down side is pretty bad, but not as bad as it could be.

Twenty years ago we would have had a full-fledged fight, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep the intensity contained. Twenty years ago I couldn’t back up enough to see that to him the intensity was a blind-siding attack — he didn’t have the emotional turmoil.

Okay. Be that as it may, but

I really, really, REALLY want that joy back!

Maybe it isn’t realistic as a goal. But “don’t hurt” didn’t seem realisitic for decades, ‘eh?

So, we’ll see….