Full disclosure: I had a whole other post somewhat similar to this one mostly ready to go over the weekend, but I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. I was in a totally different mood than when I started it, and it just felt sort of oddly cobbled together and forced. The original premise was that I had these random thankful moments for all the fun little memories I have crop up this time of year, and while that's still true, the blissful, thankful mood I was in has faded and I'm struggling right now.
My anxiety is flaring again, for a ton of reasons. Work. A messy house and no energy to fix it. A weekend alone with the kids where they battled constantly. Jacob had a mystery virus starting last Wednesday that had us worried for a bit. Election stuff and all the resulting bickering. My dissatisfaction with how politics and our society in general function as a whole these days. I passed the 10-year anniversary of the car accident I had while pregnant with Carter and spent the day oddly nervous history would repeat itself. I feel like bad health news is popping up all over the place. My parents are traveling coming up and both have been dealing with health issues. My uncle had a stroke a few weeks ago (after his older brother died of a brain bleed a few years ago) and it makes me worry my mom is next in line. My health has its own challenges and I have a normally-routine appointment coming up, but when you have anxiety, suddenly nothing feels routine.
I realized that I feel almost like I'm in one of my "trauma trances", which is the only way I can describe the surreal feeling I get after something traumatic happens--where I'm in a fog, almost a dream-like state just floating through the day only half-present, probably because my brain is trying to cushion the blow of whatever is happening. It happened when Jacob was at his worst, after my car accidents when I'd think of the "what ifs", when my dad was going through his bypass surgery, the early days of COVID, or when any family members passed away, especially suddenly. It's almost like that feeling when you're in a nightmare and desperately want to wake up, but then realize it's real life. It's not quite as strong right now as when something has actually happened, but it's like I'm bracing for something that has yet to happen. I think there's just so much going on that feels overwhelming that my brain is assuming something will have to get worse and is bracing for it now. It's making me seriously consider getting therapy because I feel like my anxiety has been creeping up stronger and stronger lately, and I find myself increasingly overwhelmed with simple things like cleaning or adding any more "'work" to my agenda. I've mentioned previously how I've struggled with things like planning party food, and lately I'd had a super hard time working up the energy to bake some fall treats I know we'd all enjoy, like apple pie, apple chips, or homemade donuts. Usually I get around to one thing or another, but this year it's been hard even to make Jacob's oft-requested Chex Mix, which takes about 20 minutes total. Major cleaning projects seem overwhelming right now. Moving forward with even simple tasks that provide any sort of additional complication to my day or week, like trying to get my car in for service or call for an eye exam, has been procrastinated. It's so frustrating. I just feel sort of bummed and "broken".
I'm feeling major empathy for so many people who are struggling--like a childhood friend whose daughter (same age as Carter) got diagnosed with leukemia a couple weeks ago, or a high school friend whose thyroid cancer seems to have returned despite not having a thyroid for five years, or another high school friend who has cancer along with his wife and one of his daughters, or a social media/reality TV person I follow who is on her second type of cancer in her 30s with four young daughters, or my uncle who had the stroke. I just feel like the bad news keeps piling up--never mind the news and inflation and shootings and other terrible things that seem be happening at alarming rates right now. It's all too much, I guess. And here I thought things might get easier coming out of COVID, but perhaps I'm just too damaged from the two-and-a-half-year stress response for that to be possible right now. It's possible I'll just snap back out of this particular funk one of these days--it has lightened up a little here and there this week as I've written this--but right now as a whole it's dragging me down pretty bad. The time change and weather have all conspired to make it worse, too.
I've tried to perk myself up with memories of good things from this "in-between" time of year from years past, the fun ways that I have filled in this "blank" time between Halloween and Thanksgiving. It usually feels like a lot of waiting around for the good stuff, all as the colorful leaves disappear, the weather goes downhill, and the days get darker, so I appreciate when there are things to break it up and keep it interesting. I hate when my camera goes dark for weeks at a time and this is a prime time for that, so anything to prevent that is huge. I really do have some great memories from this period, and when I started writing the original version of this post they did make me really happy and grateful. But now they just make me weirdly nostalgic and a little sad at how fast time is passing.
When I was pregnant with Jacob, which I found out 15 years ago this past Saturday (15 years...what?!?), I struggled for the month and a half that followed. It was that dark, cold part of fall and I had to suffer in silence through the exhaustion, nausea, fear, and frustration with living this odd double life until we felt comfortable telling anyone. Even though we were excited, we had to keep it under wraps and it just let all those other feelings take over. It was all so overwhelming that it affected my mood in mid-November for probably a decade after--that dark, lonely feeling of this time of November kept evoking all those emotions. The pregnancy was a good thing, of course--I remember that moment of finding out so clearly: the rainy night hitting up two dollar stores to find pregnancy tests, the desperate taking of the test so I could call my doctor and get some help--not just with conceiving but with how exhausted I felt all of a sudden--and the absolute shock with how quickly that test turned positive. I remember the nervous energy as I bounced all over the house waiting for Craig to come home, and the excitement and sheer terror of finding out I was carrying another life. But the reality of the following six weeks was a lot to carry around, and the only thing that got me out of it was our Disney trip. I felt better once we got there and we had a blast. Then we only had about a week to kill before Christmas when we started telling people, which was a huge relief.
I can't really think of that time without thinking of the weekend that started it all--the overnight I spent in Pittsburgh over Veterans Day weekend seeing possibly my favorite Chihuly exhibit ever. You can see posts about it here and here. I ate too much, had a drink (oops), didn't get enough sleep, and then felt terrible the rest of the weekend, but when it didn't go away after a full day of rest, it was the first sign something was up. I couldn't look at those Chihuly pictures, gorgeous as they were, for years without feeling a tiny bit ill, just like I did that weekend. I was grateful for that last hurrah, though, and thinking back, it was such a monumental, memorable few days.
Another Veterans Day weekend memory is our trip five years ago to Baltimore for Jacob's lacrosse tournament. That marked the first trip we took where we got along decently as a family through all of the sightseeing. We had one super fun day in Baltimore on that trip (covered here and here), and thinking back it was quite amazing that we got to see the Orioles stadium, Fort McHenry, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and the aquarium, all in one day. It was a really cool experience and I'm so glad we got to do it. Crazy to think that the kids were nine and four at the time, and now Carter is nine and Jacob is fourTEEN.
Even last year I had a good memory, when I had a fabulous hiking day near Ithaca before spending the rest of the weekend with Heather and Mason--which I get to do again this coming weekend! That was such a nice, restorative weekend, and I'm currently debating my plans for the trip down on Friday. Looks too cold and possibly snowy for a hike this time, so looks like a return trip to Corning! I need the mental and physical break so badly--this past weekend the kids were on my very last nerve the entire time--so I think the time away will help. A change of scenery usually does wonders and I'm really hoping it snaps me out of this funk.
I'm trying very hard to remember how blessed I am and to keep in mind that my mundane existence would be a dream come true for people who are really struggling. I've had some great life experiences, I'm blessed with a good home and a family to share it with, I have a good job even if it's hard right now, and even our somewhat frustrating existence at home is considerably better than it was a few years ago. Deep down I know all that, even if my brain is currently downplaying its importance. That's why I keep trying to remind myself of the good memories and try to appreciate this crazy path of life for all its quirks. I love that all of these little moments form a life well lived (even if some days it doesn't feel that way), and I now have so many over my 44 years that it's hard to keep track of them all--and it's pretty cool when I get reminded of one I haven't thought of in a while. Sometimes they feel like little "God winks" that remind me that God's been leading me through all along and all of these little moments have significance--even if it's not clear right away.
Just last week I had a couple random full circle moments that made me smile. First, our voting place changed and turned out to be a church around the corner that I've passed by hundreds of times on the way to the kids' first elementary school. But when I pulled in the parking lot, I realized I hadn't been there in about 25 years. Even crazier, it was the first place I visited in Greece, where I have now lived for 21 years, long before I ever moved here. When I was in college, a local Christian band that one of my InterVarsity friends had friends in was performing a concert at the church. A bunch of us hauled ourselves up from Geneseo to see the show. It was supposed to be outside but the weather did not cooperate. They did a couple giveaways during the weather delay and at least one person in our group won a gift certificate to the Christian bookstore down the road. We decided to kill time while they moved the equipment inside by going there so they could spend it. It turned out it was in the same plaza where our Walmart is, literally 2-3 minutes from our current house. The bookstore no longer existed by the time I moved back here--it had been replaced by a Hallmark store, which itself is now long gone--but I still remember wandering around the store trying to find something I needed to buy. It wasn't until I moved to Rochester a couple years later that I saw the familiar outside of our local mini golf place (it used to have fake pipes and painted slime on the outside of the building, plus the giant giraffe on the course), which I remembered passing it that day and realized it was the same area, and then went to the Hallmark store and realized it was the same place. But pulling into that church parking lot made me marvel that the first place in town I ever went to was now my voting place.
The next morning we had an all-staff gathering at work. It randomly turned into four former Rochester Sports Group employees sitting in a row. Jess, my team's digital director (she worked for the organization after I left); Brooke, who was my equivalent on the soccer side and then eventually had my job later (now with Med Center Advancement); me; and then Brenda, who I worked with for five years and was my entry into UR (also now in Med Center Advancement). It just boggled my mind that we all had this random connection from a fun but endlessly frustrating career and ended up together in a different place years later. Oh, and Brenda mentioned she ran into another co-worker of ours at an event that was being highlighted that morning because he now manages the venue it was at. Small world.
Both of those things were reminders that things we think are unimportant in the grand scheme of life actually turn out to be significant in some way. It's like that quote from The Office - "I wish there was a way to know when you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." To be fair, I think a lot of times we do know, but we don't know how soon they will end or we take for granted just how good they are. Like, whenever I'm on vacation, or when I was in college, or when I was in the last days of my first pregnancy and knew life would never be the same, I tried like heck to savor every second of it. Even having that awareness, in the end it never feels like enough. I still want a time machine to go back to those moments and savor them again. We can't make it last forever, and it's sad when it's over because it was so good. Truth be told, we shouldn't want something to last forever because it would prevent other good things from coming along, but looking back there's just never enough time. Different kid stages, friends and family you've lost, amazing vacations or cool life experiences, all of it just screams for more. And maybe that's partly why I'm in this weird funk. There's so much good stuff, but I'm in a lull from the really good stuff and I'm simultaneously worried I will someday look back on the normal good stuff and hate myself for not appreciating it while I had it. Again, I sort of know that's my anxiety talking, but it's true nonetheless. Every holiday when I'm stressing out with an endless to-do list, I try to remind myself that someday I won't have my parents around and every holiday will have an extra bit of bitterness (if not full-on grief), so I should appreciate the otherwise unbridled joy we get to have now. When I'm frustrated with elements of kid life, I think about all the stages that have passed that I miss--no matter how hard they were at the time--and how I'll someday look back at this time and feel the same way about it. It seems like the answer to my problems is to just be grateful and live in the moment, but for whatever reason that is so darn hard right now.
I know that not all of life can be fun and exciting and adventurous, so we need to manage the down times, which I usually do OK if I can get a little dose of beauty or fun. If it was always exciting I feel like we'd always be chasing the next high and the big moments we had would lose their significance. Not that we wouldn't still enjoy them, but their specialness would be less impactful overall. When I see people decorating for Christmas extra early right now, I appreciate their eagerness and that the extra bit of joy and brightness might be needed for whatever they're struggling with, but one of the things that has always made Christmas extra special was that it only lasted so long. If the tree stayed up all year, would it still feel special in December? I don't know, but I doubt it would hold the same significance. So I think it's wise to tolerate the "low" periods, find beauty in the everyday, and focus on the good as much as possible. My heart still hurts for so many other people and I'm still struggling with some of my own current circumstances, but I know this is all a part of life and hopefully, "this too shall pass," and we'll hopefully be on to better days.
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