I’ve been a little anxious the last few days. Not overly so, mind you, and I’m definitely better than I have been when handling the same situations or circumstances. But there’s just enough anxiety to give me that hairpin trigger feeling.
I handle the anxiety pretty well, all things considered. It feels like I have a couple of anxiety “types”. There’s the “buzz”, which makes my mind race and every emotion I feel is exponentially increased. I’ve got the “remembery” anxiety, where I keep ruminating on the same things over and over again. Sometimes it’s just remembering, replaying a situation and being unable to turn away. Other times, I replay things as some sort of “what if I said this or did that?” scenario, coming up with different outcomes. I’ve described it as a Choose Your Own Adventure on an emotional level.
Then there’s the spiral. The spiral is the last and worst level of anxiety, and is a combination of the other two. Nothing is worse than the spiral. I feel like everything outside my head ceases to exist, and while I might look like I’m someone perfectly capable of being a functional adult, nothing outside my mind matters. Things got really bad in our marriage during the summer of 2016, and I don’t think I could actually tell you a single thing about what went on for the next six months. Half of the year is completely lost; I still maintain that I didn’t see Spiderman: Homecoming or most of the second season of The Magicians, even though I know we watched them. It was at least nine months before I started to feel even slightly ok.
This week, I’ve been a bit remembery, and I fucking hate it. I’m so fucking tired of having a day of anxiety triggered by some mundane little thing. Some of the most innocent things will set me off. Recent FBI raids of Trump’s cronies remind me of the state police banging open the front door and how he looked as they put the cuffs on him and led him out of our kitchen. Something on TV about infidelity reminds me of things that he told me, how he explained he couldn’t send me flirty texts and naughty pics because he was afraid I’d react badly and make accusations, or how he doesn’t know how it happened, it just did.
Most of the time, I can shut things down. The morning yoga seems to be helping with that, and regardless of my mental state, I feel like this week has been a good week. Even with the anxiety that’s been an undercurrent lately, I feel better equipped to shut it down. I try to mindfully sort out my thoughts when the buzz starts, asking if what I’m thinking is based on facts or feelings (thank you, New Amsterdam, for that one) and going on from there.
I’m hopeful that next week will be more of the same.
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