Anxiety and other monsters under my bed

It's been a while.  

I've fallen into that blogging trap of going weeks without posting and as a result, all my posts begin with the requisite apologies for not posting in forever.

And so it goes.

I've been struggling.

This winter has been a tough one and I have found myself in an almost constant state of anxiety dating back to the cancer and the floods, a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop, a sense of looming disaster at every turn.  

When I was younger, I was very anxious.  I worried about change, about risk and what if? It's one of the things I am sure helped contribute to the destruction of my marriage.  Incidentally, that destruction helped quell those thoughts for a long time.  After the initial separation, I felt as though if I could get through that, anything else was a piece of cake.

I learned to roll with the punches.  That things were never as bad as they seemed, they could always be worse.  I'm trying to get that back, because anxiety is a huge asshole that robs you of your ability to enjoy your peace as you are always looking around the corner for the next sign of impending doom.  It leaves you with pain from walking with your shoulders at your ears.  Everything is a fight and everyday decisions become fraught.  Everything that goes wrong becomes a sighing, eye-rolling case of "What the hell else?"

Anxiety has been eating at me, these long winter months, and it's affected my relationship, my children, my work.  I've been neglecting friends and hobbies (hi, blog) because being on guard, it's so fucking exhausting that at the end of the day it's easier to zone out and watch episodes of M.A.S.H or surf the Internet than actually try and socialize, which ends up being another source of worry... Either worry about co-ordinating efforts or worry about if you're a horrible person if you just bow out, one more time.

I'm fighting, though.  Bit by bit, I'm trying to relax.  Breathing.  

Out with the jive, in with the love.

Slowly, but surely, I feel like I may be able to pull myself out of this darkness and enjoy the light once again.  It's going to take some self-care and taking some time to fix the things I can, but each day I'm feeling a little more hopeful.