Dear Addie,
This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend. This is time dedicated for honoring the bravery of many men and women that have given the ultimate sacrifice - their lives, for our freedom. While we honor their bravery it is also an opportunity to celebrate that great freedom that we have been gifted with our friends and family. With that being said it is not uncommon for some people to spend the day BBQing (making your favorite “ah shicken”) visiting beaches (we have many to choose from on the NC coast) or perhaps just hanging around the neighborhood pool.
With this great weekend comes a break from our day to day schedules and an opportunity for some good quality family time. For myself, this also means a snip-it of what’s to come with summer right around the corner. Cue the sudden change in schedules, unstructured time, all day, together. It’s an adjustment every year. With our busy, ridged days I should long for this time, but I hate to admit I struggle with this “freeing” feeling.
I have anxiety. It’s not the type of anxiety like getting up in front of the class to speak, or the “you just need a break” anxiety - nope, it’s the consuming everyday kind.
I like to think of my anxiety as a functioning anxiety disorder. I think I may have totally just birthed a new term there by the way ;)
It’s so often I hear people say, “I don’t know how you do it?!” And too be honest I too, don’t know how I do it some days! Or someone will reference how I seem to be a multitasking, organized, energetic whiz because I’m juggling so much! While I appreciate the sentiment...Multitasking = no choice, organized = well a much younger version of me was, yes, and energetic = try the polar opposite!
My anxiety feels like waking up holding my breath the entire day and only exhaling when you've all gone to bed at night, only to feel like I've run an entire marathon with exhaustion hitting HARD! Even in this exhausted state I find myself needing to sit and just watch mindless television to calm my mind before bed. Side note: Daddy is the opposite of needing to watch TV, but he’s insanely understanding.
A glimpse in my head looks like never ending lists. A list of things that need to be done, a list of things I should’ve (or shouldn’t have) said, a list of things that could happen - it’s never ending. Living in the moment - something this journey reminds me of daily is a real struggle. You are my teacher in all this and I feel everyday like I am your student!
Every ounce of my day is consumed with thoughts, times, or questions I need to or have forgotten to ask. This feels like a train racing down the tracks with no conductor or brakes for that matter! I have lists everywhere to try and keep it all straight - on scrap paper, my phone, on my hand, It’s constant. But I’ve been functioning on this “train” stress level for years with seemingly many unaware of the depths of its control.
That’s functioning anxiety or maybe it’s just forced functioning with anxiety?
If I dare have the courage to say these things out loud to my closest of friends or yes even daddy who has my back like no other, I feel broken or weak - suddenly I feel worse like I’m admitting to some strange realm of failure as a person, a daughter, wife, friend, mother - it spirals out of control. Far from that pulled together image people claim they see.
Fun fact, did you know when Clara and Gabe were young I actually had anxiety about treating my anxiety? Weird right? Somehow I thought their lives would be put in danger if I wasn’t always thinking and preparing for the worst possible scenario from running to Target to going on vacation.
In no way would I say that any of you, my beautiful, amazing children have caused these mental struggles with me, they’ve always been there and just adapt and change with life, but the additional challenges we face as special needs parent have brought some of them bubbling to the surface.
Stress, anxiety, depression, these are all almost instantly handed to us with an autism diagnosis. Being responsible for raising mini humans is no joke! Of course we know we are blessed, but honestly there is a lot going on here and it can take it’s toll.
I will always find comfort in just being home. I’m most definitely introverted in my heart and insanely extroverted when social anxiety creeps in. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve actually been caught in conversations with other parents at school where I suddenly forget seemingly simple things, you know - the names, ages and grades of all of you! Somehow my mind starts to malfunction. What the heck?! Obviously I know all of these things, but in the moment it all goes blank and I hope I never run into whomever it was I was talking to again. Cue mom has proven she’s a hot mess perhaps it’s time to change schools.
As if having anxiety isn’t challenging enough, then there’s the special needs parenting anxiety. Cue a whole new realm of stresses. You can only imagine how I perceive the ever so popular “exposure is key” advice on this journey. Ugh. I hate being on the spot or stared at and that just comes with the territory here.
With that advice always flashing like marquee lights in my head, this designated family time at hand, and my never wanting to be the one to hold this family back from enjoying life - is what brings us back to Memorial Day weekend only a view from my perspective.
First up for family time we decided to test out the neighborhood pool. Remember these letters exist only because of a rather unfortunate incident at our pool. So here we go.
Deep breaths mama, deep breaths.
You my dear were like a kid in a candy shop, quickly ditching your flip flops at the door of the clubhouse and setting into a pattern of entering the pool, bouncing across and getting out - the same way every time. Lucky for me my anxiety was eased a bit with the sight of some very accepting and friendly neighbors. Their presence, kind words and excitement to see us truly meant the world to me. I really needed that more than they knew. It was almost like a little God wink thrown my way. I’ll take it!
Like clockwork it didn’t take long before all those “other” people I didn’t know felt like cobra heads ready to strike. Now Addie, they weren’t real snakes nor were they probably even bothered by us in the slightest, but my thoughts that they “could” be was making my heart race. It was dinner time so I had an easy excuse to call it a night.
We would make our way to the pool one more time with virtually the exact same outcome before deciding to take it up a notch and day trip to the coast for a little beach time.
Deep breaths mama, deep breaths.
Daddy having done his research found a great beach in Oak Island that had the lowest chance of rip currents - a real issue at our beaches right now. So with a quick three hour drive, y’all would be frolicking in the waves in no time!
But not me, no no no. Unless I have to jump in to save someone it’s not happening.
I prefer to sit on the beach where the minnows surf in with the tide and rush their way back to the sea as the ocean sucks them back in.
I apply sunscreen, watch you all laugh and play, maybe snap a few pics and scan the waters for dorsal fins. That’s my job.
I get the whole beach thing though, it makes you forget. It’s kind of like mother nature’s drug. While you're there sitting with the warm saltwater rushing up towards you, the sun, ocean breeze, birds, a thousand people who could careless what their bathing suit looks like - because at the end of the day no matter what you're wearing you'll still own the same classiness of it somehow being filled with sand (It may even leave you scratching your head as to how so much sand even made its way into certain areas of your suit for that matter.) Every so often as I sat there I would forget. I would taste what so many people crave. That “freeing” feeling.
When this feeling taking over I’d dare to venture out maybe just past my knees. I know shocking right?! Just one wave crashing against me was enough for me not to fall from my stance but back into my fear. I couldn't walk any further. My stomach was in my throat and my heart was pounding. Praying to God to please not let anything happen to my family (Spoiler Alert, no one was eaten by a megalodon this weekend) and it was back to the minnow tide rush I would go.
Having had our fill of the ocean - you quite literally drank way too much I’m sure, it was time to go.
Next up was the ride home where you cried off and (mostly) on for an hour and a half. Pretty sure we were all twitching when we got home. You did however articulate quite clearly the words “I sad” in between sobs and screams. You did not want to leave the ocean. You and I my dear certainly do not share the same fears.
It’s often I say that I don’t understand this journey we are on, but I know without a doubt we were meant to be together. On that ride home it dawned on me that all things you love the most, I have great fear and anxiety over. You love to climb to the very highest point of anywhere getting a birds eye view of your surroundings. The feeling this provides give you a great sense of calm. I, on the other hand, fear heights and falling to my very core. The ocean, hands down is your absolute favorite place, ever so sensory satisfying in many ways for you. For me I see great stress and anxiety of the unknown potential evil that lurks within the waters.
This living in the moment, exposure is key life is necessary for you, but challenges me deeply. Is there a lesson here? A reason, polar opposites, are who we are and are together in all this? I have to believe there is.
So Addie, I have anxiety. A lot of anxiety. But everyday no matter how hard it is, that last thing I think of is how blessed we are to all have each other. We are doing this together, this life, our struggles as a family. OTOD.
I love you baby girl.
Love,
Mom
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