Lessons In Anxiety

(I'm the one in the back in the pink top on the right. Trying not to fall off. Seriously.)

About 90 minutes before this photo was taken, I wasn't quite sure I would make it to this lesson.

Saturday was my first SUP yoga class, and I had been looking forward to it for six months. Halfway through my 200-hour yoga teacher training, I decided that I wanted to become certified in teaching stand-up paddleboard yoga, even though I had never done it before. Without getting all astrological (it's a science, y'all), as a Pisces I am at my most peaceful and relaxed on, near, or in water. Yoga challenges me mentally, and the two seem like a slam-dunk of yoga teaching and learning for me. Plus, it looked hella fun, let's be honest.

So why would I consider cancelling just an hour before class was scheduled to start?

Anxiety.

Stupid, relentless, ridiculous, inconvenient anxiety.

Anxiety that, at times, requires medication (and I am looking into medical marijuana because why the hell not?).

Anxiety that has left me passed out on the side of the road in the dark, with a six-year-old daughter waiting patiently in the car while I woke up, finished puking, then got back into the car.

Anxiety that laid me out on the floor of the bathroom in the Georgia Aquarium on that same kid's birthday for three hours, unable to stand up, feet sticking out of the stall, her little teeny voice saying as I woke up from fainting, "Mommy? Did you know your hand is in the toilet?" (side note: not one single person asked if they could help or if we were okay in THREE HOURS that I was on the floor. NOT ONE.)

Anxiety on an otherwise amazing day that involved canning, farmer's market shopping, and dog walking. A beautiful, 84-degree miracle of a fall day in the summer.

Then WHAM. Hit in the face.

The more I talk about my anxiety (which is infrequently and not even remotely this publicly because it's no one else's business really and who the hell really wants to hear it anyway?), the more people I meet who experience the same thing. I have resigned myself to taking a pill when I need it (which makes me giggle even as I am taking it because it's like taking a "chill pill," which brings me back to the 80s), but I am still hopeful that some day it will disappear on its own or I will have amassed enough tools to get through it without drugs.

Saturday I popped a pill and breathed while I waited for the anxiety to pass, then drove down to a flat calm inlet and SUPed like a crazy person. At the end of the lesson, lying on my back on the board in savasana, arms trailing in the water, sun shining down on my face, I realized how lucky I am and felt an immense wave of gratitude wash over me. Anxiety is not so welcome  that I wouldn't immediately hand it over if given the chance, but it offers me the opportunity to be so much more grateful for the experiences I have because of what I have to go through to have them. At the end of the class my heart was full, and I felt lit up by the revelation of yoga on the water. Had I not nearly been incapable of that experience, it may not have felt so sweet.

Do you have any gifts disguised as a curse?

Tilting At Windmills

So this past week I have had two major anxiety attacks. So major that they required a double dose of anti-anxiety meds to knock them back, and even that took twice as long as usual.

I feel like I am not meant for this world sometimes. It seems like all of the vibrations in the universe travel across the plane of existence and settle in my bones. It's too much, too overwhelming: the pain, the sadness, even the happiness sometimes. I remember cowering undeneath  a seat at a Washington Bullets game when I was young, maybe six, covering my ears and crying as everyone around me roared their approval at a come-from-behind victory.

The hate spewed online and seething below the surface of many interactions this past week in Baltimore has been unbearable. As the news about Freddie Gray unfolded, changing from weeks of peaceful protest and calls for action to two nights of violence and rioting, I scrolled Twitter obsessively.

This week, I have deleted my subscription to multiple news outlets and blocked several "rebuild Baltimore" groups on Facebook. I am contemplating deleting my Facebook page altogether and archiving my Twitter feed.

Maybe it is cowardice that forces me to take actions to protect myself, but I am really struggling to cope with what is going on in this city and the deep history of racism and discord and the massive leaps of faith it will require to change, leaps of faith that I am not ultimately sure the bulk of humanity is capable of making. Certainly not many residents in Baltimore, when many in the northern neighborhoods recite standard white privilege mantras ("I can't believe they destroy their own neighborhoods!") and in southern and western neighborhoods where crime unrelated to the unrest has seen a spike as police and National Guard forces were engaged in concentrated areas of the city.

Tilting at windmills. Spitting in the wind. Bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon.

That's how changes feels. Impossible.

I am breathing. I go to yoga. I am trying to sleep (on an air mattress with a hole that lands me hovering above the floor by the time my alarm goes off in the morning, but a mattress is coming in less than two weeks so I suck it up). I write down what I am grateful for (and there is so much), but the world seeps into my skin through my pores, and I can't stop it.

I dream nearly constantly of the ocean, a beach with the water in front of me and no sound but the wind and the waves. No people, nothing electronic, nothing, just the sand and the water and the wind. You can't take a vacation from yourself, as much as you try (my early 20s proved that to me), but I am struggling to find equilibrium in the city. I am nesting in the nearly-finished rehab, and it feels like I am building a fortress. This can't be healthy, but it feels necessary.

What do you do when it's too much?

 (as an aside, I am not writing anymore on the ways in which Baltimore needs to be fixed. I have three other blogs on the subject but just have to step back. Part 1 and part 2 are still up. For now.)

(image source)

 

 

 

 

 

Anxiety Redux

It's the most wonderful time of the year here, a time when all roads lead to February 16th. My anxiety has worsened appreciably over the last week or so, as has my undercurrent of self-doubt and loathing. On these days, there isn't much to do but keep putting words on paper and paint on canvas and my body on the mat and hope for the best.

I am cheered remarkably in these times by writers and artists who have an absolutely horrible time working for any number of reasons but do it anyway. Chuck Close be damned, sometimes it is hard to just show up and do the work. Don DeLillo has brought me appreciable comfort of late with his acknowledgement of how easy it is to do nothing:

"A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. Looking out the window, reading random entries in the dictionary."

And like Madeline L'Engle, I am trying to get even more comfortable with failure:

"Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it’s dead. But we’re allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that’s how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again. If I’m not free to fail, I will never start another book, I’ll never start a new thing."

But on nights like tonight when I am shaking with anxiety under the covers, two pills and a belt of bourbon in to managing this stifling and maddening attack, it is hard to feel anything but sorry for myself, burdened with taste but not talent, desperately lonely at times like this when all I want is someone to take care of me.

Then I get the text that school is two hours late tomorrow due to cold, and it feels like a reprieve. I get up from the bed and I let the dogs out. The air is frigid and instantly numbs my cheeks, and the city is utterly silent, remarkable in that it is days after snowfall and people are usually out and about, even after dark. The distant hum of JFX is utterly silent. For just a moment I feel anxiety's grip loosen just a bit. Just a bit.

I paint. I pretend for a moment that what I have in my head will be what makes it on to the canvas, but I paint with the knowing that I can erase whatever is there with a violent swath of white when I wake in the morning and see the beautiful mess I made.

I sit down to practice the fullness of my doubts and desire, my fantasies and flaws. Each day I follow them as far as I can bear it, for now. ~Glenn Kurtz~

My flaws will win these next four weeks at least, but I will still practice. I am lucky, I am grateful. Even wracked with anxiety that leaves me breathless and unable to function I realize the gift I have been given.

Still.

The moon is full and the air is cold. There is time enough for worry and doubt.