Transforming Fear Into Excitement

Do you remember the series I wrote back in November, "Memories of Mom"? My friend Judy, Judy, Judy recommended I write those happy memories as an antidote to the sadness that was threatening to overtake me.

On Monday, my therapist recommended I do something similar to transform the fears and anxieties I've been feeling about moving to Seattle into the excitement that also exists. You see, I was telling her about things I missed about Seattle, things I was looking forward to, and how in the last few years that I lived there, my enjoyment of living there turned into stress, and how I didn't want that to be the case this time. She said that my telling her about the positive things transformed me as I told them and that I should write a series of posts about them. So here goes.

I'm moving at the end of March. In April, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival takes place in a set of towns about an hour north of Seattle. I love tulips and it's too hot in Houston to grow them. Sure, you can buy a pot of them and water them and enjoy them for a little while, but it doesn't get cold enough for the bulbs over the fall and winter. I've missed them.

The Tulip Festival is wondrous! Fields and fields of daffodils and tulips of all colors as far as you can see. And my favorite place of all is the Roozen Gaarde, which is landscaped with every tulip imaginable, and many that aren't. There are so many types of tulips, from the basic tulip we are all familiar with to tulips with fringed petals and coming in all shades of the rainbow.

My girlfriends and I used to go to the Tulip Festival when we could. One year we went, it rained and we took pictures of us looking very downcast in the rain, our arms filled with tulips. Another year, I was going with just one of my friends and her two young children, until her youngest barfed in the backseat all over everything, including her older brother. We went back home and I went by myself that year. But no matter whether I went alone or with one or two friends, I loved it, loved browsing through the fields and the shops and taking pictures. After we looked at the tulips, we usually wandered over to La Conner to have lunch and look at the shops. They had a most wonderful yarn shop there: I hope it's still in business!

This year, I will be there for the Festival and my girlfriends and I have already made plans to go. I'm very excited about this and plan to plaster my blog with pictures of tulips for your pleasure. If you ever get the chance to be in the Seattle area in April, you should definitely make time to visit the Tulip Festival.

Wow, I can feel the excitement bubbling inside of me and there's a big smile on my face. Yup, I do believe that writing this series is going to have a very positive effect on me and my upcoming move. I hope you enjoy it too!

Wrestling with the Demons

Since making the decision to move back to Seattle, the anxieties, insecurities, and depression have gone into overdrive. Perhaps they would have done so if I'd chosen Houston, but I can't know. I just know that I have been struggling with my personal demons and they have been taking up all my time.

For much of the last week, I've been in a state of constantly clenching various muscle groups and having to consciously unclench them. It's been making me very uncomfortable in some areas; I have been dealing with the added stress of feeling a greater frequency and urgency to urinate.

So after a couple of days of these feelings and actions running rampant, I began practicing my cognitive skills again, as well as deep breathing and muscle relaxation. I began reminding myself that I've done scarier or riskier things, such as loading up my car and heading off for an unknown destination; or selling my car, taking out a loan, and going back to school while working part time — and having to basically find new work each quarter through my first year back at school. I once bought a house that needed major rehabilitation and I acted as the general contractor for the project, as well as doing all the tile work myself, as well as some of the flooring with friends and much of the painting with my mom. 

I have done major things before and succeeded. I have been out of work before and found new work. While I've gone through a great deal of money the past five years, I have survived being mostly unemployed for four years (the first one of the five was on purpose). So I can easily move back to a place I've lived before where I have a significant support network. I can re-embrace those things I liked about Seattle and reframe those things I didn't like. And I can find a job working in the industry I worked in for most of my professional career.

It's talk like this that has helped me come back, little by little this weekend, to a place where I am actually feeling better. I'm still clenching my muscles, but I can eat again. I didn't do anything much beyond do a little laundry and watch videos on Netflix, but my levels of anxiety and depression have decreased so that I have a smile on my face and even a little smile in my heart.

Another Year

Well, another year has passed and I have to ask myself: what have I accomplished and how have I changed in the past year? 

In some ways the answers are easy. I turned a corner in my grief/depression/therapy and began to mend. I met therapeutic goals. I decreased medications. I became happier and healthier. I began to exercise. I wrote a novel! And I made the choice to move back to Seattle, foregoing sunshine and heat for close, long-term friendships.

In other ways, it's not so easy to see changes. Once I decided to move, I was finally offered a full-time job here. Instead, I am back on the networking and job-hunting wheel. That leads me to feeling stressed. Or rather, it triggers my fears and insecurities that then cause me to feel anxious and stressed, afraid that I won't be able to find work, that I will run out of money, etc. Which are the feelings I've been living with for much of the past four years.

But I will not allow them to control me any longer. I know I will find a great job in Seattle, sooner rather than later. I know I will find a great place to live that is affordable and has all that I want and need, including parking space and being within walking distance of a dependable and useful bus line. I know that I will be able to bus to work easily and painlessly. And I know that I will be able to cope with the weather up there because I have my light box, I am much further along in my journey to happiness than I was when I left, and because my friends and I have committed to spending time with each other. Much is different now, twelve years later.

I still have a lot to do. I need to practice my cognitive skills more because I'm still getting caught up in my irrational thoughts. I need to continue on my quest for a healthier lifestyle, which includes cooking real food and getting aerobic exercise frequently and regularly. And I need to get back to my creative work and revise my novel and return to drawing and painting.

Balancing Act

It's been an uneventful week. I went to therapy. I stayed home a lot and babied myself because I had a big bandage on my nose and a smaller one behind my right ear. I felt off, probably because of the surgery. 

Today I got the sewn-on dressing off of my nose so we could see how the nose and the graft were looking. The doctor, the nurse, and I were all very pleased with how it looks! It's a bit swollen and there are bumps from the stitches, plus smaller bumps from the dissolvable stitches still in my nose. But it looks fine. I'm very pleased, even though I have to keep putting a smaller bandage on it for another 1-2 weeks. Beats what I've been doing, though.

I've spent part of the day getting stuff ready to go to Dallas tomorrow to stay with Sierra and her boyfriend for my birthday weekend, just like last year. We'll have a blast. I'm not even stressing about the drive this time.

I'm kind of sad this afternoon. I found out that a friend had her baby yesterday evening, but the poor little guy died not long after birth. They weren't really surprised: he had a lot of things wrong with him. But they were hoping that he'd live long enough for those things to be repaired so he could have a life with them. It's so sad that she carried that baby to full-term and then lost him. My heart goes out to them.

I'm trying to find some kind of balance between feeling sorrow for my friend and her husband, and feeling happiness for my coming weekend. It feels heartless to think "well, I'm not going to let this ruin my day, much less my weekend." Yet it seems irrational to let this event do just that. So, looking for that balance where I can feel both sorrow and happiness for the separate things and appreciate that they are both a part of living life.

I've been packing my bag and folding laundry with this cloud over my head, feeling down about my friend. But that does no one any good. I, and Sierra, deserve my full and joyful attention this weekend. For my other friend, I will find a thoughtful sympathy card and tell her how much I've been thinking of them and how much sorrow I feel for them, and that will be enough I think.

Balance — in life and in thought — has been difficult for me. It's one more of the many entangled threads I am working on. Times like today make me work harder on it. But just writing about this has helped. I feel a delicate balance. And that makes me feel better.

Cognitive Slips, Mozambique Epiphanies, and My Nose

It's been a rather full week here in Skye World. I'm currently sitting on the couch with bandages on my nose and behind my ear and with thoughts buzzing and whirling around in my head like so many hummingbirds and butterflies.

On Monday, my therapist and I talked about my last post, about having the blues and just being down. She said my "cognitive slip" was showing. Basically, the tone of my post was one of powerlessness, as if I had no options but to feel depressed and oppressed and anxious. I wasn't using my cognitive skills to look at my situation differently or to see options. For example, instead of being depressed and staying depressed over the darkness of the weather and feeling like I was living in a cave, I could have acknowledged that I felt low but that I could then change it. I could have watched funny movies on Netflix. I could have taken on a project (and I have plenty of those) to turn my mind in a different direction. I could have blessed the rain for helping Houston against the drought. So I need to work more on my cognitive skills.

Then I was stressing about the decision whether to stay in Houston or move back to Seattle. There are pluses and minuses on both sides. I've gotten a lot of input from a variety of people about it. Then I was offered a full-time job by the people I did work for at the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. Right then I realized that I'd rather move to Seattle. Then I was offered a contract from that company to work on a job that would require me to work and live in Mozambique for 28 days, then leave and let another writer be there for 28 days, then I'd go back and so on for 6 months or more, and I could live in Seattle if I wanted. I even said yes because it seemed ideal.

Then the anxiety set in. And the stress. I was already still stressing from my cognitive slip and from my upcoming skin cancer surgery. Did I really want to travel to and from Africa and live there for a month at a time? Was it safe? Could I handle it? My cognitive slip got worse. But some of my friends talked to me and gave me their opinions and advice, which actually helped me focus on what was causing me so much anxiety. I realized that I'm not yet to a level where I could handle something like the Mozambique job, for a whole lot of reasons. But I can handle finding work in Seattle and moving there. Mozambique helped me see where I am with my mental health work and how much I still need to do. Luckily for me, the company was very understanding when I told them I didn't want that job, and they are even going to keep me in mind for projects I could do while I'm looking for work in Seattle.

Stumbling on the Road

So my January 1 post was positive and optimistic and forward-looking. That's a very good thing. Unfortunately, I have not been positive and optimistic. Since I've gotten home from my trip to Seattle, I've been kind of depressed, kind of blue.

At first I thought it was just the fatigue that comes from traveling and being with people 24/7, but it hasn't gone away. My sleep is messed up. I've only exercised once (although I think I overdid it and I still am very sore from it). I'm not eating well. And I'm not doing anything but surfing the web and going to appointments and doing necessary errands.

So I pondered what could be causing it. Well, it's been gray at home since I've been back, and cold, and rainy for much of it. It was that way in Seattle, too, but there my friends had lots of windows so that even gray light seemed like light. And I didn't even have my light box. At home, I live in a cave for all intents. I live on the first floor and cannot open my blinds all the way because then people could see in. If it's sunny outside, I can at least turn the blinds all the way so the light comes in and no one can see in because it's darker inside than outside. But on gray days I have all my lights on and it's lighter inside than outside so it would be just like being in a fish bowl. So I don't have windows letting in the natural, if gray, light.

I miss my friends in Seattle. I remind myself that I would not be living with any of them if I moved up there, but I would see them with some regularity and frequency (but not every weekend, most likely). And here I have only seen the people in my apartment office, briefly, the people at the dermatological surgeons' office, and my psych, briefly. And the brief contact with the people at the pharmacy and grocery store. No real connections.

Being home, reality sets in. I am still unemployed and I feel rather listless and unmotivated about looking for work given how unsuccessful I've been. I feel more motivated (slightly) about looking for work in Seattle. I've got to write that manual for my volunteer thing but I'm unmotivated because I find myself not caring as much. I haven't been treated the same since my 2011 breakdown. Plus, I totally forgot to do an editing project for them: I blame my worry about the skin cancer possibilities because it was for that week. So I'm going to sit myself down for a couple of days and write the damned thing and get it out for review.

Where I Am

Well, it's a new year. People are making new resolutions or goals or intentions. We have to remember to write a new year on our checks and letters. And my mind is still back six or seven months and I'm wondering how it got to be 2013 so fast.

Last year was a better year than the year before, even though I had less employment. I made a huge amount of progress mentally and emotionally and I began exercising regularly. This bodes well for 2013. 

I'm becoming better at making new habits and sticking with them, except when holidays get in the way. And I doubt I'm going anywhere for a long trip this year until Christmas (unless I'm in Seattle, then I'll take a trip elsewhere). It's being out of my own environment that makes it harder to keep up with the exercising. I don't have the same space set up and I want to spend lots of time with my hosts, so I don't generally do exercise while away. But with even more time before the next major trip, maybe I'll have the exercise thing so efficient that I can do it anywhere!

I am more content with myself and where I am. Even though there are still some areas of clutter and I'm not terribly fond of my apartment, I am grounded, centered, and at home. I am becoming more myself and am very much less self-conscious. Even though I am anxious about finding work and making money, I'm still aware that I've come very far and that where I am now internally is fabulous. Where I am externally is acceptable; I'm not sure if I will find a fabulous external, but acceptable is fine. I believe that when I am doing work I enjoy with people I enjoy working with, my external will ramp up to much better than acceptable.

I have terrific tools now to help me deal with life and my issues and I'm getting quite good at using them. I have a terrific therapist (who I would be sorry to leave). I am learning important life skills (finally) and it's all paying off. Hell, I have a whole pint of Haagen Dazs ice cream in the freezer that I bought on the way home from lunch and haven't dug into yet. I'm not hungry, and in the past, that wouldn't have stopped me. I've made progress on all fronts (except my fear of driving in ice and snow).

As my t-shirt says, "Life is Good." In 2013, it's just going to get better.

Where are you now?