Musings & Commiserations

My chest tightens, struggling to expand as my lungs labor to fill themselves with air in a consistent manner. My eyelids flutter, never fully closing as the tears well behind them. The world spins, darkens as it seems to close in around me. My ears fill with the deafening sound of silence as the shroud of nothingness covers me. I spiral, and the anxiety swells like a typhoon quickly overcoming a shore.  Managing my anxiety has been a battle I have fought since I was able to name it, able to attribute the sinking feeling I often carried around with me. At times, it feels as if a pinball is bouncing off my ribcage - tinkling from one side to the other and then back again. Other times, it feels like the above; a mind-numbing, suffocating experience. Any given day is a grab bag - will I wake up with a feeling of doom and dread; will I feel OK and then something disturb my peace; will I feel OK all day and never have a worry in the world? Reasonably, any of these options are real ... ex...

Some days, I wonder how healthy it is the things I share on the Internet; then I weigh the thoughts I have kept to myself the last calendar year and the ones I have let slip fleetingly from my fingers. Equally, they seem balanced, but pleasantly (or unpleasantly) unfiltered.  A little over a year ago, I wrote "Closure"; a blog where I ruminated on my lack of understanding for "why". Albeit not my best writing, it was a good mile-marker for the now - the places I have fortunately traveled in life, physically and metaphysically.  Years ago, after my first gut-wrenching break up, as in the first one which left me feeling as if a hole the size of Manhattan had been blown through my chest, I put a wallpaper on my phone which said "you're not a part of their journey and that's OK". Last year, I struggled with this. This was the push for my "why". The drive to have a better grasp on the thought process of someone else. Would I still love to know...

I can smell fall coming; a slight cooling to the air around me. As I sat outside watching P & B run yesterday evening, their brother at the vet following surgery to remove from his stomach and intestines a pompom off one of my blanket he decided to eat, the air smelled like home - like a place forever embedded in and on my heart. Memories of times long gone flooded my mind.  Now as the air around me warms this morning heading into the afternoon, I look at the houses around me; tucked away, safe, in an Alabama neighborhood. I speculate and make assumptions about their inhabitants, knowing little to nothing about who my neighbors are and how their lives may have been shaped 20 years ago this morning. Shouts of which team to support in typical Saturday football contests and the whirr of lawn mower motors fill the air around me; without pausing, today would seem typical, but, I sit, crying on my back porch. My neighbors equally unaware of how a day 20 years past changed my life and...

 A lot has changed; some good - some bad, but still ... it is a lot.  This time last year, I was a simple volunteer in a mental health support group ... now, I'm the president. This was not the course I thought would happen. Truthfully, I was going to step back before now. Do I feel obligated to stay now? Maybe. Does this mean I understand the supreme weight now placed on my shoulders? Hell yeah, and it is insurmountable.  This time last year, I was moving through a circle of insanity with a man I thought I would be spending the rest of my life with regardless of the toxic nature of our relationship ... now, I'm divorced, single as a pringle but moving through the circle of insanity with the same man, still, due to my own shortcomings. If I had stuck up for myself, would things have been different/easier/better? These are questions I cannot continue to worry myself with because it won't change the outcome, really.  This time last year, I had two dogs. One who loved m...

I wrote this post a while back after seeing so many floating around the Internet, and several have made me think "I would want my child to know something like that," but at the end of the day none of them were really what I would have said. So, if I could tell my child anything, I would tell them: Be confident in who you are, whomever that may be.  I have struggled for so long trying to figure out who I really am. I was 21 when I wrote this and couldn't tell you who I truly was. Today, at almost 26, I still cannot say I know for a fact who I am. None of that matters, though. What matters is that I'm confident in myself, which has taken even longer for me to accept and really understand. When we live in a world so full of mixed messages about what kind of person is perfect, it's hard. But Christ made us perfectly, and we should be proud of that. No other person's validation should bring us joy, because we were already made perfect in His image and He has ...

Some days you just feel like writing; even if it's about nothing or to document the sad stuff, writing is an outlet. At least it is for me. Have you ever had a situation, just something going on in your life, you really feel no one else can understand or you can never seem to find the proper words to use when explaining it to someone else? Someone who doesn't know you well enough? I feel like that every day. Between chronic migraines, depression, anxiety, a turbulent family life and the feeling of more bad things than good, it gets hard to keep up with it on my own, so how do I explain it to someone else? Trust me when I say I'm constantly focusing on the good in life, though. It may not seem like it, trust me I know that too, but every day I practice a mindfulness of the good in my life and in this world. But, there are some days where I sit down and accept my defeat knowing it's all for a greater good. I have learned some days will not be good and that's OK to...

I often have a moment that I know is going to be one that I'll remember forever. Yesterday, my granddad and I were sitting in the kitchen and he started making a pineapple sandwich. It was bread, mayonnaise, crushed pineapple and cheese. I couldn't believe he was going to eat it, but he somehow got me to try a bite of his sandwich. It was surprisingly very good. I ended up making me a pineapple sandwich and he and I laughed the whole time. Before he let me try his he said, "hold on, let me lick it first." When I was about 6 or 7 I was eating a sausage biscuit and he'd wanted a bite. I remember not wanting to let him have any because 1) it was mine and 2) it was the last one, so before I was going to let him have a bite I licked it. I mean I licked that biscuit up one side and down the other. I don't think I've ever heard that man laugh as hard as he did that day. He was never going to actually eat my biscuit because it was mine, but then I did that and he ...