Breathe, Just Breathe

I’m going to deviate a bit from my normal Jiu Jitsu spiel and woah’s to talk about something a little bit more personal, truly exposing my vulnerability on this one. I’ve run into a bit of an issue lately when it comes to my mental health and looming anxiety. I think it stems a bit from feeling like I am undeserving of all of the phenomenal things life had bestowed upon me in the past few years. I am irrevocably head over heels happily in love with my one true person, I have stability in my home and finances, and we all have our health in good form. So naturally, rather than enjoying all of this wonderfulness in the moment, I begin suffering panic attacks over the impending fear of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep having thoughts of terrible accidents, car wrecks, debilitating illnesses etc., of my partner, and being trapped in a world without him. Why do I get to be happy with my soulmate when other people, good people, never get that lucky? I just can’t stop worrying that something bad might happen.

When I was a young kid, I used to suffer from night terrors and feeling of impending doom. I was terrified of death; not just for myself, but those I loved too. I was too afraid to sleep because of the nightmares, but then I would lie awake at night, terrifying myself into fits of anxiety thinking about people dying. This led to me being super tired and antagonizing my already fragile thoughts and emotions even further. A true catch-22. I would have silent fits of terror, crying into my pillow, until my parents came in one night to calm me down and soothe my nerves. I remember my mom talking to me about not worrying about things that may happen far off into my future and saying they wouldn’t be dying for a very ling time. It seemed to work to placate my anxiety for years, until the night terrors once again reared their ugly head in my late teens before subsiding, and now returning again almost a decade later. Just like clockwork, every 10 years.

I am such a control freak, that anything outside my realm of dictation sends me positively spiraling. Car rides if I’m not driving, being a passenger on a plane, hearing about someone’s genetic predisposition for a certain disease. Perhaps this is why I’m so adamant on sticking to my own schedule. I clean and organize things on certain, set days, I am very particular about the way clothes get folded and how luggage gets put away, I require a clean and empty kitchen void of other people before I begin cooking an extravagant meal, and I react poorly should any of these things go awry. I hate surprises and sudden plans, I loathe spontaneity, and I don’t even like if something in my schedule gets canceled or even rescheduled, as my mind already had it determined for a certain time. I always feel like when something like that happens, I have to convince myself that it is helping me avoid a certain tragedy and that destiny had to intervene to deter my path, lest something awful would have occurred.

Lately, my sleep has become even more erratic. The nightmares wake me up, and then when I’m up, I can’t fall asleep because I start thinking about how devastating it would be should something happen to John. Then I work myself up into a frenzy and can’t calm down. I don’t even know why I am writing about all of this, because I am sure it makes me sound like a total nut-job. John had some really good advice for me the other day, when he said if I spent so much of my time worrying and focusing on the what-ifs, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the actual time we were spending together in the moment. He’s right; what a shocker, and trust me when I say I understand completely and know that doing all of this is wasting time and stressing me out and making me sick. But for some reason, I am having such trouble stopping. When I was a kid, I went through a strange obsessive-compulsive bout where I couldn’t sleep unless I saw the fire alarm light blink a certain number of times, or I couldn’t leave the locked door for school unless I touched the door knob a certain number of times etc. This really impacted by sleep and my day to day life and I jut couldn’t stop. Until one day, I did.

I’m hoping it’s like that again for me. Where one day, I wake up, and simply stop panicking and obsessing. The reason I worry so much now that it won’t, is because of all the good things I have that I feel like I just don’t deserve. Every other time I went through this, my life was nowhere near how good it is now. I know I’ve said it before, but I truly feel like I have found my purpose in life by doing all of these amazing things that I have been able to accomplish or discover because of all the opportunities and help and support of my loving partner. He makes every setback, no matter how extravagant, feel like a tiny blip on the radar because he provides so much love and support that no loss ever feels so catastrophic and no trauma ever too great. He makes every win, every success, and every triumph feel astronomically wonderful because I have the most perfect person for me to share it with. Even when I find myself sometimes embarrassingly envious of someone else because of certain things they have accomplished, or obtained, or even how they’re viewed, it is so fleeting because I know every day I get to come home to the best marriage ever that nothing else really holds a candle to that reality. Just got to learn to manage this stress, stop giving myself anxiety over things that haven’t even happened, learn to shut my brain off and sleep, acknowledge that maybe I do deserve happiness, and lastly, just breathe.