- Making it through the night. This morning, as dawn came, and I managed to drift off to catch a couple hours of sleep, it felt like a remarkable blessing to have made it through the night.
- Mini bananas for breakfast - have you ever eaten these things - they're tasty!
- Hanging out with my grandma, aunt, mom, and sister-in-law to be while shopping for dresses for the upcoming wedding.
- This afternoon while we were shopping, L. quietly drew me aside, and told me that she and T. had wanted to ask me together, but he is out of town this weekend and my aunt's planned dress shopping trip had tipped their hand, and that they would like me to be a bridesmaid for their wedding, and I wouldn't need to shop for a dress today. That was a really special moment for me - very healing and affirming in lots of ways I can't quite explain. It was fun, too, to trade a few texts with T. later in the day, just thanking him for including me as well.
- Talking for just a little while this afternoon, a few stolen minutes alone in a car, with my mom, who understands what it is to battle fear and anxiety, and blessed me by simply understanding, without making me feel bad for what I was experiencing, or trying to "fix" me.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Daily 5 - Day 172
Today's Daily 5:
Stigma: Being Understood
I was reminded again today, that despite the growing awareness and effort that so many are making, things that fall into the category of "mental illness" are easily stigmatized.
And the reason? Well, my theory is that it's simply impossible for someone with thought patterns and brain chemistry that are "normal" to understand, and that makes it just a bit weird and scary.
I was thinking about it again because I was talking with someone who did understand. For five minutes this afternoon I talked about how I passed last night, pushing the anxieties and fears away. I talked with someone who understood how something that can be combatted quite rationally in the middle of the day becomes incredibly overwhelming, and can't be rationalized away when it is keeping you awake at 3 am. Someone who understood that well meaning advice like "get back on the horse" isn't really all that helpful because what you're dealing with isn't rational, but that you can't get mad at the person giving the advice either (even though it stings) because you know that they really do care about you, but just can't understand.
It was nice, just for a few minutes to be with someone who understood.
And the reason? Well, my theory is that it's simply impossible for someone with thought patterns and brain chemistry that are "normal" to understand, and that makes it just a bit weird and scary.
I was thinking about it again because I was talking with someone who did understand. For five minutes this afternoon I talked about how I passed last night, pushing the anxieties and fears away. I talked with someone who understood how something that can be combatted quite rationally in the middle of the day becomes incredibly overwhelming, and can't be rationalized away when it is keeping you awake at 3 am. Someone who understood that well meaning advice like "get back on the horse" isn't really all that helpful because what you're dealing with isn't rational, but that you can't get mad at the person giving the advice either (even though it stings) because you know that they really do care about you, but just can't understand.
It was nice, just for a few minutes to be with someone who understood.
Kick at the Darkness
I woke at 3:30. Blogged yesterday's daily 5 sometime around 4. At 5 I rolled over again to stare at the clock, and wondering when the night would come to an end, or sleep would finally return.
In the darkness, all of the rational things that help during the day seem to lose power. I lay there, panicking, exhausted, feeling helpless, praying desperately.
Somewhere in the midst of the night, a Bruce Cockburn lyric I've often heard quoted returned to me "Got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight."
That's what last night felt like.
Somewhere around dawn I drifted off for a few more hours of restless sleep.
I googled the lyric this morning, and it seems apt, especially when you add the line just before it:
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
Maybe that lyric returning to me was the whisper of God. I don't know. But it helps a little.
Because I lay there frustrated and angry that I was feeling the way I was. It's been months since I've had a panic episode like this, and I was beginning to be able to believe that they were a thing of the past. I still pray that one day they will. That like the depression I struggled with for so many years, there will be healing.
It reminds me, in some ways, that line about kicking at the darkness of the phrase from scripture that played over and over in my head the day I was healed from depression a little over four years ago. That phrase involved kicking too. And the image it conjured was one of scarred and bloody feet, but not scars that were fresh - scars that were healing. There is so much more to that moment, and that story. It can be shared another time. But the simple conjuring of that memory by a piece of lyric in the middle of the night was somehow hopeful. Hopeful that this too can end.
"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight."
At three and four and five this morning it felt like a fight that would never end. And really, it hasn't yet. But daylight is here, and there is some respite in that. Time to regroup, to remind myself again of truths. To push back the darkness that overwhelms and entangles, and grab onto truth and light. To trust that Jesus will somehow bring peace again.
In the darkness, all of the rational things that help during the day seem to lose power. I lay there, panicking, exhausted, feeling helpless, praying desperately.
Somewhere in the midst of the night, a Bruce Cockburn lyric I've often heard quoted returned to me "Got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight."
That's what last night felt like.
Somewhere around dawn I drifted off for a few more hours of restless sleep.
I googled the lyric this morning, and it seems apt, especially when you add the line just before it:
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
Maybe that lyric returning to me was the whisper of God. I don't know. But it helps a little.
Because I lay there frustrated and angry that I was feeling the way I was. It's been months since I've had a panic episode like this, and I was beginning to be able to believe that they were a thing of the past. I still pray that one day they will. That like the depression I struggled with for so many years, there will be healing.
It reminds me, in some ways, that line about kicking at the darkness of the phrase from scripture that played over and over in my head the day I was healed from depression a little over four years ago. That phrase involved kicking too. And the image it conjured was one of scarred and bloody feet, but not scars that were fresh - scars that were healing. There is so much more to that moment, and that story. It can be shared another time. But the simple conjuring of that memory by a piece of lyric in the middle of the night was somehow hopeful. Hopeful that this too can end.
"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight."
At three and four and five this morning it felt like a fight that would never end. And really, it hasn't yet. But daylight is here, and there is some respite in that. Time to regroup, to remind myself again of truths. To push back the darkness that overwhelms and entangles, and grab onto truth and light. To trust that Jesus will somehow bring peace again.
Daily 5 - Day 171
It's 3:52 am, and I'm laying here, wide awake, fighting panic, and feeling like my world is spinning just a little bit out of control as all of the changes coming in the next month and months seem huge and overwhelming. In the middle of the night all of those things that I know for certain in the daylight flee, and it is oh so much harder to fight this battle. And it's this moment that I realize I was so distracted last night by the panic and the hope I could simply sleep it off, that I forgot to write the daily 5 list. It's these moments that I most need these lists, these middle of the night panic filled moments. It's these moments, too, where it's hardest to make this list.
Today's Daily 5:
Today's Daily 5:
- Time with L. shopping for and sorting out wedding invitations. Just need to nail down the details of when and where, and then we can do the last bit of designing, and begin the assembling and mailing.
- Laughing with Mom and L. as we looked through my parent's wedding pictures, and some family pictures. It was fun to see her face she saw the hairdos of some people she's met in our family and some baby pictures of T. that she'd never seen before.
- Natural health treatment. Hoping it really does help the healing process.
- Reminding myself that it really does seem that God has lead me to move into Grandmas.
- Thankful for rides to and from various places with my rather understanding family.
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