Tag: #anxiety

The Rest is Silence

I lost a member of my flock last week. Dotty was a budgerigar which is more commonly known as a parakeet. I adopted her from a foster mom back at the height of COVID in 2020 as a companion for my bird Blu. Blu had lost his mate, Fluffy, a few years before and as social birds I thought having a companion would be good for him. Blu, sadly passed away a year or so later at the beginning of 2021. Dotty lost her mate as well and came from a home where human/bird interaction wasn’t very high on the young families list. I’m a hands on kinda bird owner but I learned to respect her boundaries. She was never let out of her cage before and I’m a big believer in free flight in the house. She smacked into the sliding glass door a few times and resented me having to hunt her down behind furniture to put her back in her cage. Sammy, the macaw, kinda wanted to see how comfortably she could fit the little ones head in her beak so I never let them play together. She liked to be sung to. I used to sing “Hello Dotty” to Hello Dolly. The most remarkable thing about this little feather-ball was she was always trying to talk and master the sounds around her. She always sang, chattered, and made vocalizations which were solid attempts to talk. I should have spent more time with her to aid her speaking ability but shoulda/woulda/coulda seems to be the refrain which serenaded her life.

When I lifted the cage cover to check on her after she had been making odd noises I found her with her wing caught in one of the slats on the bottom of her cage. I extricated her and moved her over to my bed to observe her. She was breathless from the struggle with the bars, both wings drooped in exhaustion but she wasn’t fighting my hold on her, and when I uncurled my fingers from around her she didn’t try to fly away. In fact, she held fiercely onto one finger. She started having some sort of fit where she would try and bend her head all the way back to her tail and fly. The first time this happened she landed on the floor. I got her back on the bed and made a nest in the blankets for her but the fitting kept coming over her and she would get dislodged. I had never seen this kind of behavior before and I was terrified she was dying. Frantic, I found a site that connects people with questions with experts with answers and paid the $1 sign-up fee and was passed off to a vet who wanted to look over the techs notes before she continued. I never heard back from the vet. By this time I had Dotty blocked on the bed with my leg, she was still fighting the seizures but she was getting tired. I took a video of an episode and sent it to the vet. She was against my leg a little on her side when I saw her wing quiver; then she was still. I informed the vet she was gone and put my phone down and picked her up and gently held her to my chest and sobbed. I cried harder over that small bird than I did for my mother or my two brothers deaths. It’s taken me almost a full week to clean out her cage and move her out of my life. I miss her singing.

I wish I could say my mind allowed me to make this all about her. Recriminations rained down on me like a flight of arrows calling to mind every mistake I made, when I didn’t keep her cage clean, when I didn’t let her exercise, when I kept her in front of the window on a hot day, how I never took her to the vet, how I shouldn’t have let her suffer and I should have just rung her neck and put her out of her misery. Then a shield came up and deflected the arrows with comforting words (which has never happened before, at least not this consciously); You didn’t know her age, birds hide their illnesses, budgies don’t have a long life in a cage. You loved her, you took care of her and you were with her up until the very end. I don’t know which voice is true. I know which one I want to believe and for the first time in my life, it isn’t the negative telling me it’s all my fault. The self talk I’ve been practicing in my daily life, when it doesn’t seem important, has built up the muscles of support when I was to weak to block the old ingrained mantra of self loathing and disappointment.

The emotions of mourning have unsettled me, tho. I spoke to my sister about it briefly because I’ve not been able to talk to anyone about it without tearing up, and she speculated it might be an accumulation of all the changes, deaths if you will, I have experienced in the last five or six months. She might be right, I’ll have to talk to Ellen about it at our next session, but having these emotions so close to the surface is troubling for me, well, emotionally. Crying is so foreign to me, I feel like I’m forcing the emotions so I try to stop it and it comes back up to the surface in the most inopportune moments. I’m trying, on one side of my brain, to allow myself to cry when I’m alone and where I’m supposedly safe and the other side decided it wants to watch TV, write a journal entry or a blog, play with Sammy, crochet or do anything other than the needful. I guess I will cry when I cry. Maybe once the tears are all dry I will find the peace which comes with silence.

Psyche Stew

I realized yesterday I am stewing in anger…..not drowning in it like before…..but stewing in a thick savory broth of anxiety with juicy pieces of frustration at myself and the world. Quartering my accomplishments like new potatoes into my “inabilities”; not being able to or have a way to take care of myself, to think clearly, to get a job, to pay my bills. With some self-assessed failure and corresponding flagellation like peas and carrots in one big InstaPot life.

What this means is I am going back to the basics, the meat and potatoes if you will, of my recovery and try to gain the ground I’ve lost. I haven’t really lost it, I know where it is, I just need to deconstruct the stew, portion it out into easy-to-deal-with sizes, and trust in myself and God that this isn’t my last supper.

I Do Declare

Now that I’ve moved, still whole and fairly well settled I have started the process of looking for a job. At the end of my four hour slot each day of searching I just want to crawl back to my old job (but in a new city) and go back to what I know, after all the devil you know…. I try to research and apply for five jobs a day, which doesn’t sound like much but phlebotomy and EKG tech jobs aren’t as ubiquitous as one would think. One company is waiting to move over their hiring platform onto another and after thanking me for submitting my application they would prefer I do it again on the 19th. So, I’m waiting for the days to tick away.

At the end of these arduous application processes they have self declaration pages. Am I a veteran: No. Am I of any color: No. Am I binary or non: Binary. Do I have a disability…..Do I? I asked Dr. W once if I could go on disability for the major depression and anxiety disorder he diagnosed me with but he said he wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t qualify but because he felt it wouldn’t be good for me. I don’t feel like I’m depressed any longer, I feel like my problem is more trying to learn the basic human skills I should have gotten from a normal dysfunctional childhood to navigate the world around me. My mood still goes up and I come back down but, then again, everyone does. I’m still on medication but I’m on blood pressure medication as well to keep that on an even keel, not because of an acute problem. I don’t want to be disabled. I understand they have requirements to hire people who are challenged by life one way or another and there is a little voice in my head that wants to abuse every option to get a job, but I don’t want to be disabled. If the site doesn’t have specific things that qualify me as disabled, I check refuse to identify. If there is a list and depression and anxiety are on it I check yes, but I’m not specific. I feel my answers should be consistent but this is as consistent as I can get.

How am I supposed to handle this? Is there anyone out there that can give me advise or share how they handled this in the past? Or am I just sticking my head in the proverbial sand hoping I can convince the world I’m perfectly healthy, nothing to look at here and just keep moving along. Sigh.

UPDATE:

Now they’re getting crafty. They ask “Do you have a disability OR a history of a disability.”. Its like they read my mind…..or my blog…..and are requiring me to declare whether I want to or not. Grrrrr.

Slip Sliding Away

It is just too easy to let go of all the structure and allow myself to slip back into disruptive and destructive habits when I’m beyond overwhelmed. I’m trying to move closer towards being ready to move and the harder I push the more appears that needs to be pushed, or pulled, or tossed or boxed. My last day of work is Thursday, my last day at this hovel is Saturday and then clean on Monday. It’s careening in on me and the people in me are screaming for attention because they are anxious, they are worried, they are excited and they are absolutely freaking terrified I will break again. I know this is a possibility, but I also feel in my heart of hearts (the one that isn’t racing or palpitating) if I break I will gather the pieces again, I will work the glue back into the shards and put myself back together again. Humpty Dumpty, eat your heart out!!

Alone At Last

Both roommates have moved out as of this last Sunday. Their outstanding utility bills are still unpaid and I’m wondering if it’s worth the effort to pursue them or just be done with them. I trust Karma will eventually bite them in the wallets, heaven knows this is a slice of Karma for me. I’m good with personal debt paying, meaning if I borrow a dollar from you I will make every effort to pay you back and to make sure you know that I’ve paid you back……credit cards, not so much. But then using credit cards in the past was a way for me to stretch to the end of the month and when you use plastic to stretch eventually you or it breaks….and I shattered. So, pursue or not to pursue is the karmic question.

I haven’t lived alone in YEARS. I’ve lived in this place for over 20 years either with family or the denizens of CraigsList. I always valued having the house all to my self, and I become disgruntled when the other residents would come home. Especially before the apocalypse, it wasn’t often enough I would get my sister to take my mother off my hands for even an hour so I could just sit and feel myself quietly vibrate and pulse with the anxiety and anger I stewed in for all those years. I treasured the time post-apocalypse when the roomies were at work or on dates or doing whatever it is they did outside the house so I wouldn’t have to pretend at being happy, or hiding my irritation at them/the world/my life. Now, I have the house all to myself and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I like it but I’m constantly on edge thinking someone is going to come home and my zen will shatter. I don’t want to get too comfortable in it because I will have to give it up, but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to get comfortable either to build the strength for the adventure ahead.

A big part of the problem is I’m still hyper-vigilant in checking to see if the last one’s car is in the neighborhood because her aura (for lack of a better term) gave off a certain whiff of menace (which is why I took Sammy to my sisters) and my aura and hers were not compatible in any way shape or form. I didn’t fear for my life, per se, because anything she did to me I knew I had recourse through law and the courts, but I had to protect Sammy and I’m waaay to attached to that bird to take the chance of letting anything or anyone happen to her. I didn’t like feeling unsafe in my own home. She didn’t move out until late Sunday night and I had to be up early so I went to bed. I asked her to leave the keys on the table, which she did. To make sure I saw them she left EVERY light on in the house she had access to and she LEFT THE FRONT DOOR UNLOCKED. But she’s gone….she’s gone…..she’s GONE!!! When is the anxiety going to be gone too?

Ghosts aren’t corporeal enough to make the kind of noises which are ratcheting up my anxiety and dread. I’ve come to believe accumulated psychic trauma weighs on the studs and floorboards like a pregnant elephant causing the wood to groan, mimicking habitation in the house when I am alone. I’m sure it does it when I’m gone, but that’s the whole tree-in-the-forest kind of thing that no one can prove. When I hear the creaking or what I interpolate to be the swinging of a door I collapse inward like a paper bag before I could push against the embedded folds. I would like to sand over and smooth out this ingrained reaction but I don’t know if I will be able to until I actually put down roots in a new plot of soil all my own. It won’t be here because I need to get more roommates (sigh) and I will have more roommates when I move in with my Sister. I don’t know if the psychic trauma will be packed up with my belongings and travel with me, but I think that’s why 95% of everything I have will be donated, thrown or given away to disperse it back into the universe. Believe you me, that’s one roommate I can live without.