I moved my life this weekend.
I had so many panic attacks and so much severe stress that it was maddening. I took it out on Jacob and I took it out on myself. I drank too much. I did things that reinjured me because we didn’t have enough help, and by the time it was over I was physically and mentally exhausted.
Two years ago I told myself that from then on I would buy disposable furniture and not keep anything I couldn’t easily move. Somehow I ended up keeping way more than I planned and purging almost nothing, and now that I’m here I’m looking around and realizing that most of what I brought doesn’t even belong in this new place.
The first time I walked in, I had this overwhelming sense of panic and sincerely felt like I had made the wrong decision to move. How much money am I actually saving? Is any of this really worth it? Because I don’t even like this place I’m bound to for now.
Everything was dumped everywhere with no rhyme or reason, and for two days it was suffocating just trying to walk through massive piles of who knows what. I was late to work because I couldn’t find my comb or my hair dryer. Nothing was functional. The animals were feeling the stress. I was feeling it. Everyone was feeling it.
So I finally did the one thing I had been hesitating to do. I called and made an appointment for medication.
I hadn’t spoken to my provider in a long time, and I haven’t had Ativan in months. I weaned myself off Lexapro by the end of June because I wanted to feel things again. The key moment for me was being at the boys’ games and realizing I couldn’t feel the joy or excitement or happiness I should have felt when they won their trophies. That wasn’t fair to them. I wanted to feel those things with them.
I want to feel the highs as well as the lows, and I know they come together. The problem is that lately the anxiety lows are something else, and I can’t control the rage that comes along with them. I lash out at Jacob. I start passive-aggressive behavior, and then I become someone I don’t even know. I threw a chair. I yelled. I was triggered, and I exploded. I can’t control it, any of it, and that frightens me.
Every day I felt like that switch could flip, and I didn’t know what I was capable of when it did, so I made the appointment.
My doctor wasn’t very forgiving about my decision to stop taking Lexapro. She told me I should have stayed on it for at least a year. I don’t necessarily agree because I know what happened after Eric died. I didn’t stay on medication that long then either, and eventually I crashed. She believes I stopped this time because the medication was working and I felt good and hopeful, and maybe she’s right about some of that.
But I despise taking an anti-anxiety medication or antidepressant every day. I’ve spent most of my adult life coping with the help of Xanax or Ativan when I needed them, and sometimes I would go months without either. My panic attacks started when I was working as a body piercer in our shop in the early 2000s. I know what they are. I know what they feel like. I’ve tried plenty of medications over the years, and eventually I would leave those too because I don’t like not feeling.
Feeling and emotions are how I navigate the world. When I can’t read the room or I get confused about other people’s intentions, it’s usually time for me to question what the medication is doing to me. I’m not making excuses. I just know myself.
All of this makes me long for Eric because he helped me through these episodes so many times, just like I helped him when his own mental health was in jeopardy. We knew those parts of each other. There was something about having another person who already knew what was happening without needing an explanation that I don’t think I appreciated enough when I had it.
Now there is a move, a new place, a new job, and financial uncertainty. I’m exhausted, and I want some time to recoup and relax, but I can’t seem to get it because there is always something else that needs to be done. Unpacking, work, the relationship, the animals, responsibility. There is always responsibility.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days just after Eric passed and I left that life. As horrible as that time was, I had nothing, and I wanted nothing, and in a strange way I was free. Free to wander, free to be, free to explore the world and myself. Even though I had lost everything that mattered to me, I felt more freedom than I had ever felt in my life. It was an awakening of sorts.
I learned who I was underneath all of the roles I had been playing as an adult. I reconnected with dreams I once had, only I saw them differently because I finally understood that if those things were ever going to happen, I was going to have to make them happen for myself. No one is coming to save me now. It is my job to save myself.
And lately, in the very back of my mind, overshadowing everything, is the fact that in exactly two weeks it will be the first anniversary of Greg’s death. It’s not like Eric, though. It’s trauma more than it is loss. Even though we spent three years together, it’s not the same. I can’t put my finger on it, it just isn’t.
Then I think about my parents and how their birthdays were last week. My father turned 90 and my mother 89. Statistically, they don’t have long left here on this earth, and I’m just over here letting the time fly by. I wanted to reach out after they sent my daughter a birthday card for me. I thought about it often, but then it slipped away and another month would go by. I don’t feel guilty about it, I’m just aggravated that time gets away from me and I can’t seem to do all of the things I want to do to catch up in my own life. My mother-in-law is there also. The last thing she said on my voicemail over a month and a half ago was, “I miss you.” I miss her too. I find comfort in her now in a way I haven’t in the past six years, and still somehow I let the time pass there too.
I also have this feeling of dread that I have chosen the wrong path. Should I have stayed in Chicago? Where is my place? Did I miss a turn?
I think all of this confusion, questioning, emptiness, wondering, and uncertainty is here to make me critically think about the choices I’ve made up until now and actually have to put a plan together. In a way, I’m still wandering, just not across the country. Just in life.
I feel stuck, but am I really? Maybe I just think I am.
Thanks for reading. I love you all –xxooC
Come Further In
Some stories can be told publicly. Others need a smaller room.
Beyond the Pages is the more intimate side of The Blue Widow Chronicles—a growing private library of previously unpublished journal entries, deeper reflections on the Chronicles, member-only writing, and guided writing resources.
Membership is $5/month and includes access to the complete growing library.
Come further in → Beyond the Pages
Tell Me Something Good