Mission: Distraction!

voltee ♦ June 24, 2015 ♦ 4 Comments

My life is starting to seem a little more normal.  Which sometimes is great, and sometimes just hurts.

Occasionally these days, I’ll even find that I’ve somehow made it home from work without sobbing in my car.  But as soon as I realize this, I start crying.

I guess it’s just going to have to be two steps forward, one step back for a while.

Something that has really been helping is busy-ness.  It seems that if I keep myself distracted, it’s easier not to fall into the black hole.  And also, it helps the time go faster, which is vital to the healing.

Video games were essential in the early days.  I found an awfully distracting Sherlock Holmes game that turned my brain into a painless, mushy lump for quite some time.  And maybe neither of us would have survived without the epic mind-number, Candy Crush! Yes.  I’ve crushed more candy than I care to admit…

But there’s also been so many actually productive projects, like jewelry making, and gardening.  And I’ve gotten around to many things I’ve been chronically not getting around to for years, like building a new earring holder, and getting my many neglected bird feeders up and active.

There has been a rather nurturing theme in my distractions.  We are lovingly caring for many tender little plants, exponentially more than ever in the past.  And I’ve turned my backyard into a sort of wildlife sanctuary, with birds, fat squirrels, green frogs, tree frogs, a turtle, an adorable duck couple, multiple deer, and one lost, surprisingly frightened, bear.  I guess I am just surrounding myself with as much life as I possibly can.

Because when I am not distracted, I start thinking, and remembering, and then the darkness comes in.

It’s not just the sadness that is difficult to handle.  There’s the unrelenting guilt, for sure, the crippling doubt, yes, but also, and sometimes most of all, the paralyzing anxiety.  I have had a few panic attacks over the silliest things.  It’s terrible, but it makes sense, I guess.

What happens when your absolute worst nightmare comes true?

Your lesser nightmares seem imminently more probable.

So, yeah.  Since the miscarriage, now I feel like anything, literally, could happen.

Car accident?  Microwave explosion?  Home invasion? Getting mauled by a bear?

All seem very possible.  Especially the bear one…

And the subcategory of this new, unstoppable anxiety?  I have become a hypochondriac.

Which is also, I guess, pretty easy to understand.  For one thing, I’ve had to have tests run for all sorts of awful things, so all sorts of awful things are weighing on my mind.   And for another, my body basically turned against me, so how can I trust that it’s normal ever again?  That’s one of the hardest things for me to handle.  It’s just the deepest of betrayals.  The fact that my baby died, and my body didn’t tell me.  I had no idea that something was that catastrophically wrong.  Or, if my body was trying to tell me, I misunderstood entirely.  Which seems so impossible, and is just so very upsetting.  What else might I be missing? What could my body be hiding from me? I spend a lot of time worrying about it.

I have a few major concerns right now.  The first is a heart attack, which I feel I could have at just about any moment.  But I am most fearful about having one while I sleep.  And then there’s cancer.  Everything is potentially cancer these days…

I know these fears are, most likely, not rational.  But I can’t seem to get them out of my head.

On the whole, though, I guess I am slowly becoming a functional human again.

This week, at the dentist of all places, I felt something surprising that I haven’t felt in a long time: hope.

It was fleeting, and hasn’t been back, but it was there, and I liked it.

And I know it will be back!