August has been a bad month for my anxiety. I am struggling with some real debilitating anxiety lately.
Overwhelming, not focusing, and taking over my quality of life anxiety.
I feel like I’m okay or I have a handle on everything and then something happens that causes my anxiety to literally spiral out of control. I can literally just watch and feel my “normal” life slip away over seconds, hours, days, weeks. I just watch everything fall apart right before my eyes. I literally have ZERO control over this.
It all started at the beginning of the month.
We went swimming at a friend’s house. When it comes to kids and water, I literally cannot deal. I wrote this piece a couple years ago when I just had Raelynn about secondary drowning. At that time there was a very well known article that was being shared on social media relentlessly.
Now I am going through the same thing with Briar. I knew this summer was going to be an issue with Briar because she has zero fear. I knew she would want to dive straight into the pool. And I was correct. If we weren’t in the pool ready to catch her, she would literally jump in the pool and go under water. Okay, so I know there are some kids that swim at 18 months, but Briar was not ready and I was not ready.
Anyways, we were at a friend’s house and she continuously stuck her face in the water. And then one time she came up coughing, hard. I instantly went back to all the stories I read about secondary drowning. Except I basically took it to a whole new level.
In the moment, I was silently freaking out. But, inside, I was already having the biggest anxiety attack and panic attack imaginable.
I was scared to put her to bed that night because I was afraid she wasn’t going to wake up. I spent all day on Sunday googling signs and symptoms of secondary drowning. I convinced myself that she had some of the symptoms. Every article basically said that symptoms could appear in a couple of hours or as long as 72 hours. I watched her like a hawk for 72 hours. It wasn’t until the next weekend that I essentially felt like she was okay.
I stressed for an entire week over nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I kept telling myself over and over, “Do you know how much water you probably choked on when you were a kid?” It didn’t matter. I couldn’t reason with myself.
The following Sunday was the real kicker that made my anxiety spiral out of control.
There was a post on Facebook that stated an attempted carjacking happened literally right past my front yard.
In short, a woman and her teenage daughter were in their car driving home late at night. There was a sign in the road and she decided to slow down, get out of her car, and move it to the side of the road. When she turned back to her car, there was a man trying to get in the car. She ran up to the car and yelled at him and he ran away. She got back in her car and sped home. She called the police, they searched the area, but obviously no sign of the man.
Also that night, there was a potential break-in at my friend’s house and she lives close to me.
I am legitimately sick over this.
So this guy “ran away” but where? Was this the same guy that attempted to break in to my friend’s house? Are there multiple people involved in this? These are only a few questions that are currently overwhelming the fuck out of me. I think the main thing that is stressing me out more than anything is that it was so close to my house. Like, I could have looked at my window and potentially witnessed this. That scares the fuck out of me.
I’ve always been scared of everything.
But now that I have kids, EVERYTHING stresses me out and overwhelms me.
Since this is so close, I visualize our house being broken into. If something were to happen to my kids…Oh my god. I cannot even imagine. I do not EVER want to imagine.
My brain is in overdrive. I am exhausted. I am not sleeping. I am not focused. I do not feel like I’m in control of anything right now. I am scared my kids are going to pick up on this. Especially Raelynn.
As soon as I got home today, I just told Scott I needed to talk and I lost it. He was very compassionate and understanding. I think he really saw how upset I was.
Yet, he doesn’t understand it. He comforts me as best as he can, but it’s so hard to explain what anxiety feels like to someone that doesn’t have it.
