Anxiety

Washed the anti-anxiety medication from my system, for two weeks one tablet every other day, then two week of a half a tablet every other day till I was clean. Now I’m emoting as me, music gets to me, a good video gets to me, the class-less neighbors get to me, and friends I care about can get to me. But at least it’s me again and not some drugged person viewing my life as it unfold around me. I’ve been on medication since my stroke happened five year ago this month. Blood pressure meds, cholesterol meds, and a sleep aid. Five pills in the morning, four pills in the evening and four more before bedtime. Now one less.

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but at least my emotion are getting to be mine regardless of the stroke. I had some real problems when out for a walk, when smells would hit me and when just being me. Sitting in a restaurant I felt like I was about to die, rapid heart rate and the shaky hands and body. I though about getting out of there, but doubted could on my own power. Thought about EMS getting me out, but too much drama and embarrassment to be worth the trouble and expense. So shut my eyes and find a happy place, breath deeply until all the noise around me sounded like a bee hive of activity. Slowly, ever so slowly my heartbeat returned to normal. From the buzzing beehive thoughts of contentment, peace at last. When I returned people looked away, but I didn’t care, I’d managed to contain myself. I was almost me, but not if you get my meaning. If you’ve ever had an anxiety attack you know exactly what I was feeling, if not count yourself lucky.

Anyway two weeks now clean and basically happy, content. Trying to write again (see enclosed) and I feel almost like normal whatever that is or was. Just go with the flow when I feel emotions coming over me. It too shall pass, just trying to feel like me again, trying to be me again. Heard from a friend from my past who told me it had taken her eight to ten years to even begin to recover from her accident. The same friend who I’d thought about in the hospital when my stroke hit. I patterned so much of my recovery around the advice I’d given her. Then I was her with my brain neatly cleaved in half, with the right side of my body not responding to commands. Now I knew just what she felt, how lost she was and how mournful of her life pre-accident. Little grain of truth and hope I’d given her, not realizing how she was beginning to learn to walk again, not realizing how she couldn’t read. Oh well, just one of life big lessons, how to get back all that you’ve lost in the tenuous state of being and not being.

What a long and tortuous way to learn the value of life.

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A tidal wash of emotion rakes over me,
tears, rage and happiness;
all emotions in-between.
Awash in feeling long suppressed, long deigned...,
drugged into the background of me.
Years since I felt as me, reacting as me I am me but not quite.
Washed from my mooring, adrift on the sea...,
home port a distant view
with twinkling lights and the sounds of me.
Adrift through the fog listening,
still straining for the sounds of home.