Jun 29, 2025 | Personal
“Oi. Give me a proper hug. And none of that toe-grabbing crap.”
That’s how I have to talk to Dan to snap him out of a dissociative reverie. It’s also how I have to talk to Dan to get him to stop an endless loop of negative self-talk.
He’ll chuckle at my pretend callousness.
Not that he tells me what he is thinking or feeling. I look at the scowl on his face and use deductive reasoning to formulate theories about his inner monologue.
Considered along with his tendency to blather when he’s trying to get the bullshit out and observing how he operates for the past 16 years, I think I’m not too far off the mark.
Plus, I’ve been analyzing my own brain a lot lately, and he and I have a lot in common. The human brain functions similarly from person to person, even if the details are different. We’re unique, but also we’re not.
I’ve been thinking about how the priest asks Fleabag where she’s going when she breaks the fourth wall, and she looks at the camera like, “What the fuck? He can see that?”
Similarly, someone recently disarmed me when I was coming down from a panic attack by asking “What’s wrong?”
I was taken so off guard by the question that I time traveled into the present.
I’m used to being asked, “How are you?” which we all answer robotically and assume no one wants a real answer to. (I kind of hate the question, to be honest.) I can remain detached until I feel seen. And once I feel seen? That feeling of exposure is intensified when someone is genuinely looking for emotional information, not just going through the motions.
There’s a whole post in this about me not wanting to be noticed. Maybe later.
But this person listened to my shaky voice and saw my contorted face and rigid posture and knew me well enough to know I was not myself. He shocked me by asking an Earth-to-Emily question. It brought me into the present moment, so I thought I’d try a similar strategy with Dan.
Lo and behold.
I am not afraid of being understood, but I have a lot to learn about communicating things I have no words for. What I’m finding is that it’s easier for me to find words with my whole self in the present. So maybe I’ll keep trying to jab a stick in Dan’s spokes and see if I can send send him flying over his handlebars.
Jun 27, 2025 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 2
Based on a true story.
I can’t deny marrying the guy. It’s a matter of public record. But recalling the moments I genuinely liked Rodney for the sake of telling this story is hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted.
Rodney and I did not grow apart, discovering after many years that we were no longer compatible. We didn’t look at each other over coffee, eggs, and the morning paper and mutually agree that it was time to move on. He did garbage things to me, and I fought like hell for a couple of years to completely extricate him from my life. But I’ll get to all of that.
First, you need to know how things began, and I want you to know that I know how emotionally detached I am from The Beginning.
Some might say I’ve failed as a memoir writer to convey the truth as it was. I don’t know. Maybe I have. But just so we’re clear, it’s not my present disdain for Rodney that gets in the way of this retelling. It’s my knack for repressing memories—specifically the memories I would need to write more genuinely about the early days.
It’s a disability borne of an instinctive need to protect and preserve my own mental health, and I submit that if it weren’t for this disability-slash-superpower, I wouldn’t be here writing so awkwardly about my life circa 2003.
In fact, I probably wouldn’t be here writing at all. Delete
The thing that first attracted me to Rodney wasn’t his smile, it wasn’t his sense of humor, it wasn’t his brown eyes, and it wasn’t his education. No, the thing that really drew me to Rodney’s eHarmony profile was that he lived in Indianapolis—three whole hours away from the small-time Ohio River town where I’d grown up.
At 23, I was a college dropout living in Indiana and working in Kentucky as the secretary for the City of Henderson’s Parks, Recreation, and Cemeteries Department. It was a decent job, but renting shelter houses for family reunions and hunting for the graves of long-dead local celebrities with the president of the county’s historical society wasn’t really doing it for me. Back then I had two hands on the IBM electric typewriter and two eyes on the office door.
My first date with Rodney was dinner followed by a free concert in the park. (I don’t remember the name of the local band, but I do remember there was a fair amount of cringing.)
I suggested we meet at my favorite restaurant, O’Charley’s, for a meal before the concert started. That way, if the company turned out to be horrible—and I figured there was at least an 85% chance that it would—I could at least enjoy warm dinner rolls dunked in cheesy loaded potato soup.
Rodney rolled into the O’Charley’s lot in a 1999 red Dodge Dakota with a growling aftermarket exhaust system. (Present-day me wanted to throw in a joke here, but realized she didn’t need to.) I’d only been waiting at the restaurant entrance for a few minutes when he walked up and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Rodney,” he said, flashing a wide smile just like the one in his eHarmony profile. He stood maybe an inch taller than me at about 5’7”.
He wasn’t overdressed for the venue, but he was better dressed than just about everyone else. His sky-blue dress shirt was starched and ironed. The top two buttons were undone, revealing the collar of a white crew-neck T-shirt underneath. Not only did his dress shirt have a place for those little plastic stays in the collar, he was actually using some.
Rodney wasn’t overweight yet, but at 31 years old it was apparent that overweight was in his near future. His hair was blond and straight, reddish at the temples, and thinning in back. His eyelashes were thick and light, and they grew up and away from his round eyelids in near perfect curls. Despite the hair line, his features teamed up with his round face for an overall effect that was something resembling a grown-up Campbell’s Soup kid.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Let’s get a table.” I have no recollection what I wore for that first date, but I do remember my wardrobe at the time, and it would have given off that working-Baptist-girl-from-the-Midwest vibe. So it was without a doubt clean, plain, and totally unremarkable in every way.
The hostess dropped us off in a cozy corner booth. I asked Rodney about his drive and we chatted about work. “You’re a journalist?” I asked swirling my spoon in a piping hot bowl of soup.
“Was,” he corrected. He pointed to the back of his neck. “You see that?” he asked, pointing to a deep, leathery crater of scar tissue on the back of his neck.
“Whoa. What happened?” I asked, careful not to wrinkle my nose too insensitively.
He buttered a dinner roll under the dim pendant light. “Wrong place, wrong time.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but continued with his story. “I was in the middle of writing a piece for the Kokomo Gazette about a bank robbery one weekend. A few thousand dollars was stolen. Not much of a heist, really. The Kokomo police suspected some local kids were looking to score some extra cash to fund their drug habit or something. Anyway, I was out doing some research so I could wrap up the article on it for the morning edition when I noticed I needed gas. I filled up and went inside to grab a doughnut, and the Circle K was being robbed at gunpoint.”
“Oh my god,” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and put my glass of Mountain Dew back on the cocktail napkin. The straw never reached my lips. “You got shot? No way! Was it the same guys who robbed the bank? Why were they shooting at you?” A family at the next table looked our direction.
“Don’t know for sure if it was the same guys; they didn’t have much evidence to go on for the bank thing. Probably, though,” he added after the slightest pause. Our server came by with our entrees. I thanked her. If Rodney was aware of her presence, he didn’t let on. When he had my full attention again, he continued. “I was fortunate the bullet just grazed me. But it’s like I said—wrong place, wrong time.”
I covered my gaping mouth with my dinner napkin while my steak and potato got cold, either too nervous or too trusting to realize that if that scar had been from an actual bullet wound, he’d be dead. I still had plenty of questions, but I wasn’t sure it was polite to ask them. Did it hurt? Were you in the hospital long? Is the guy who shot you in jail now? How long ago was this? Is that why you flinched outside when we heard the car backfire? Finally, I managed to say, “Is that why you aren’t a reporter anymore? Is that why you moved back to Indy?”
Rodney nodded. We chewed silently while the Goo Goo Dolls played on Muzak and a middle-aged woman at the bar guffawed, margarita in hand. Because I didn’t have an interesting story to follow Rodney’s, the silence felt awkward. I silently scolded myself for being awkward and boring.
“I’m just kidding,” he wiped his mouth, flashing a toothy grin.
“Wait, what?” I left the conversation I was having inside my head and returned to the one he and I were having. I set my fork and knife on my plate, as if doing so would make it easier to study his expression.
“I’m just kidding,” he repeated. He looked at me almost hopefully. As if he was waiting for me to laugh, I think. I was too confused to get the joke.
“So you weren’t shot? Then what happened? With the scar, I mean.”
“I had a funny looking spot the doctor thought was skin cancer, so he cut out a pretty deep hole. Sutures didn’t hold, thing split open in my sleep, and it just never healed right.”
“Oh,” I chuckled at my own gullibility. Delete
My second date with Rodney was an early October evening of fried festival food and sweet treats at the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival. As a rule, I hate crowds but I was willing to make an exception once a year for the event that blessed the world with carnival games, funnel cakes, and bake sale pies and peanut butter fudge from area non-profits.
We walked around for a bit, watching sticky, cotton candy-coated children beg their parents for ride tokens while we ate junk food. When we ate our fill, we made our way west down Franklin Street toward Rodney’s truck. The farther we got from the Tilt-O-Whirl and the roller coaster and the carnival game hosts yelling into their PAs, the more I appreciated how the cool crispness of the early fall evening dampened the sounds of chaos.
Rows of small businesses with their names hand painted on large windows gave way to rows of bungalows with screened-in porches and tiny front yards, many of them decorated for Halloween.
In front of one modest house with peeling white paint and orange pumpkin lights framing the front door, we passed a straw-stuffed scarecrow sitting in a lawn chair just a few feet back from the sidewalk. Only it wasn’t really a straw-stuffed scarecrow. It was a person pretending to be a straw-stuffed scarecrow.
The prankster waited quietly for the perfect moment, then jumped out of his lawn chair and shouted “Boo!”
I jumped back and laughed, a little embarrassed. Rodney stood up straight and stiff and screamed for a good ten seconds. (Ten seconds might not seem like a long time, but I promise you it’s an eternity in certain situations—like when you’re riding out an earthquake or looking on in horror as your date screams like a banshee.)
When he finally stopped, the scarecrow and I stood still, embarrassed, but not for ourselves. I patted Rodney on the back in small circular motions.
“Are you okay?”
He bent over at the waist and drew in long, slow breaths. The scarecrow took off his mask, exposing the face of a remorseful young man, probably still in high school. He apologized. Repeatedly and profusely.
“I am so sorry, man. Do you want to sit down?” He gestured toward the lawn chair with his mask. “Uh, can I get you some water or something?”
Rodney ignored the question, trying his best to laugh off what had happened. “You got me good! I had no idea someone was in there!” The scarecrow and I exchanged a look. Rodney’s exaggerated smile and forced laugh were painfully inauthentic, but it didn’t hurt us in the least to let him have his lie, to save face in front the date he was trying to impress. The scarecrow figured he’d done enough damage, and I figured whatever trauma had turned a harmless Halloween prank into a full-fledged PTSD trigger wasn’t something either Rodney or I were eager to discuss during a borderline successful second date. Delete
Our third date was so intentionally dull, I’ve forgotten what it was.
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Jun 26, 2025 | Anxiety, Brain Tumor, Cancer, Medical Cannabis
I just cancelled tomorrow’s outpatient PT session, but I did make it to today’s CT scan and MRI.
I was thinking that although I wasn’t terribly excited about PT tomorrow, I could make it through. Then I got out of bed a wobbly mess and needed help pulling my pajama pants up, and the inner monologue went something like this:
You are not seriously going to do PT at eight o’clock in the morning, are you?
Well, when you put it like that.
And so I signed into MyChart. My next session is scheduled for Tuesday.
The scans today took so much out of me when I was already moving around hunched over. I think my spine or neck is misaligned. So the car ride, the transferring, the IV contrast, the heat—I think all of it whittled away at my resolve.
Pushing through stuff I have no business attempting sets me up for physical failures that lead to negative self-talk that lead to anxiety spirals. There are times to step outside of my comfort zone, but tomorrow morning doesn’t feel like one. So I’m being nice to myself and taking the day off from appointments. Especially ones where physical exertion is the entire point.
Tomorrow will be for watching Murderbot and maybe some writing.
Speaking of writing, I filled out my CT and MRI forms using my left hand. It’s much easier to write nearly without the time crunch and with a writing table angled to fit me comfortably. The arms of my wheelchair are a nuisance. But it was legible. It need only be legible.
One thing I need to give myself credit for before I take a gummy and try to relax: I opened my eyes for thirty seconds with my head pinned down inside the MRI today. I probably could have gone longer, it just seemed unwise to push it when I needed to be still.
Jun 24, 2025 | Anxiety, Brain Tumor, Cancer, Personal
I didn’t go outside today, but I was outside for all of five minutes yesterday getting to and leaving PT, and I feel like I’m still experiencing heat exhaustion.
Heat and this anxiety disorder are partners in crime. I am better today than yesterday, but still experiencing weakness. Case in point: I exhausted myself just trying to pull my pants up because my right foot was standing on them and I couldn’t move it out of my own way.
The good news is I feel much less anxiety seeping out of Dan’s pores. I think the email I sent the other night might have registered. I don’t know for sure, because he still hasn’t responded to it directly, but the vibes are better. I’m not soaking up his drippy angst like a crusty, dried out sponge.
I can work through my shit, or I can deflect his. But hard as I try, I cannot do both.
I’ve always been clearer in writing than in spoken word. The physical toll of having generalized anxiety has taken the strength of my voice on top of that innate deficiency. So my takeaway here is to just send emails from here on out. I get way better results.
In the early aughts, I had a boss that was like, “Just email me.” Goddamn delight to work for, that fellow introvert. He’d put on Sarah McLaughlin CDs and we wouldn’t speak for hours at a time. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to make up for the sheer chaos caused by everyone else. I was gone in six months.
When I was out to lunch one day the co-worker I shared an office with was like, “He was looking for a form on your desk and saw your resumé. I think his exact words were, ‘Oh shit.'”
It was good to feel appreciated, but not so good I wanted to stay.
And that’s the thing about me. I know myself pretty well, nope right out situations when the stress becomes overwhelming. But with a brain tumor in my head, there’s nowhere to nope to.
I have to deal with it and all the stress it generates. And that’s why when other people make me feel like I am cancer, as opposed to having cancer, I crank up the cranky to eleventy bajillion.
But Dan gave me a hug I didn’t have to request, and the Crank Monster has been quieted.
Jun 23, 2025 | Anxiety, Brain Tumor, Personal
As a writer it’s a special kind of disabling to not have the right words to communicate how profoundly impairing it is to have an anxiety disorder.
Not being able to explain myself is a very real fear of mine. Mostly because of medical trauma thrust on me by lazy-ass doctors who wouldn’t listen and made me feel like I wasn’t being clear.
The PT at outpatient today knew anxiety, though, and she explained things that I thought I’d conveyed a hundred times before to Dan.
But somehow when a medical pro is explaining what’s going on he believes it. I don’t think he does it on purpose—if I did this relationship would have ended long ago because I have no tolerance for wilful mistreatment—but Jesus H. Christ on a Bike! Being doubted about my own experience makes me feel like shit.
Like when you’re a woman in a meeting and someone with a nutsack repeats what you just said but suddenly everyone at the table understands because it came from someone with a nutsack.
I’VE SAID WHAT THE PT JUST SAID HALF A DOZEN TIMES IN THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS, AND I GOT NOTHING FROM YOU, I thought.
Doubt about my experiential observation of symptoms is why it took me two and a half years to get a diagnosis. It’s kind of a big deal.
But I’m too tired to rehash all that right now.
Bottom line is this: Dan told the PT he thinks I’d benefit from restoration of confidence. It’s true in many ways. But also? I don’t know that I’m not the problem here, and that has nothing to do with my weak hip flexors.
Believe me, jerkface. Understand that my confidence wouldn’t be shaken if I weren’t doubted all the motherfucking time.
My PT seems great. I am not frustrated with her at all. I think she will really help me. I just need to vent because this gaslighting stuff makes me feel like they’ve been voting on a new pope in my ears for 11 years.
Jun 22, 2025 | Anxiety, Brain Tumor, Personal
The other night while unable to sleep, I composed an email as Dan snored. It was my best effort to get stuff out without feeling like I had thirty seconds to explain myself before he stomped away in a man-baby huff.
I don’t even feel like what I have to say is all that bad, but he is so avoidant of anything remotely touchy-feely these days. I mean, we’re all like that by nature to a certain extent, and it takes self-reflection to overcome the default of being protective and invulnerable. But his dissociation has been off the charts.
He didn’t mention the email or its contents so I asked bluntly, “Did you get the email I wrote last night?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I read it this morning.”
Folks, I don’t know what he thinks about any of it. That’s verbatim all he said. But I’ll give you my take, because that’s what I do here.
I feel like he has been blaming me for a very long time for expecting too much of him when he was the one expecting too much of himself. I was unfairly being punished, because he wasn’t willing to do a modicum of introspection.
Quite frankly, I am sympathetic to the ways bullshit societal messages get sewn into our security blankets. That doesn’t mean you can make me feel like shit without pushback, though.
Just ask Rodney.
I would try to thank Dan for his help, to show him he was appreciated, and he’d get grouchy. Eventually everything I asked for wore me down to the point asking made me panic. Which stuck me in freeze mode and worsened my disability. Which meant I had to ask for more help.
You see the problem?
I’d try to get him to say “no” when he needed a break. He’d get mad at me. I’d try to read his mind when he was brain tired, I’d get it wrong. I’d say something innocuous and he’d play devil’s advocate because he didn’t want to agree with me about anything.
I didn’t handle it in stride.
I was spinning my wheels. It was emotionally exhausting and not fucking helping me in any way to spend energy I didn’t have on something I had come to learn would be a pointless endeavor.
Anyway, I think I stemmed the blame-bleeding for the moment. Time will tell when and if we fully recover. What matters to me most as I write this post is that I said what I needed to. What he chooses is not my problem, and—at least for now—the silent hostility is gone. I feel like I can process emotional junk again.
That’s enough.
Donate to Emily’s brain cancer GoFundMe campaign here.
Jun 22, 2025 | Anxiety, Brain Tumor, Cancer, Personal
I want good things to stay. Why does that feel like it’s too much to ask?
I got a letter in the mail saying that my primary doctor is leaving and they’ve assigned me a new doctor a couple of towns over.
I’m not just sad. I’m heartbroken. Again. I want to sob into a package of Oreos. This is not helping my abandonment issues or anxiety at all. Why can’t I have a doctor who helps me?
Why?
Dr. J has done so much for me, including switching me to Lexapro, hearing me loud and clear when I said no mammograms, encouraging me to try PT, scraping me up off the parking lot, and telling me at every visit to do something fun every day.
As opposed to the absolute cunt before her that berated me in writing for not making appointments and getting the labs she wanted.
My oncologist is fine. A good doctor and a stable fixture, but it’s complicated because his existence reminds me I have cancer. He can’t make the brain tumor go away. He probably looks at me and sees a time bomb.
Even though I don’t see that in the mirror, lots of people reflect that pain onto me. It’s excruciating.
There’s an episode of Glee I carry around in my head where Jane Lynch’s character, Sue Sylvester, is confronted about treating a cheerleader with Down’s Syndrome cruelly.
She replies by saying she has a sister (I think) with Down’s and all she wants is for people to treat her like they treat everyone else. Bottom line: Lynch is as an asshole to everyone.
Can’t argue with that logic.
I want to be treated like everyone else too. Healthy people could all die at any moment too. Stop pretending they’re different than me. I can still have a heart attack or get hit by a bus. Treat me like that.
Treat me with care, not caution.
So I must start from scratch with a new patient appointment. And my medical history is complicated. And the brain fog. And the anxiety. My last “get to know you” appointment was two hours long.
I wish I could cry.
Jun 21, 2025 | Anxiety, Brain Tumor, Cancer, Personal
I grew up in Tornado Alley. One day, when I was just a Little, a tornado ripped a towering willow tree up from our back yard.
It landed on our back patio, the crown of the tree a fraction of an inch from our sliding glass door. The roots were pulled up and there was a hole in the earth where it once lived—that is, before the men came with their chainsaws and dissected it.
An anxious child of two parents who had seen some shit, they reasonably did not understand my subsequent fear of storms.
When one very expectedly came around again, and I kept them awake all night crying, they locked me out of their bedroom. I cried myself to sleep on the plush hallway carpet outside their door.
They were exhausted. Of course they did what they had to do. But I don’t think I learned not to be afraid of storms. I think I learned that if I bothered anyone, they would abandon me. Best not to cry when anyone can see.
***
The night before my craniotomy at Barnes, the neurosurgeon came to tell me what to expect in the morning. Oh, by the way, there was the usual risk of death with general anesthesia. He asked me to sign the consent form. The standard surgery spiel with bonus “we might cause brain damage while we’re in there” stuff.
Dan was in the hospital cafeteria getting something to eat.
It was late enough that the lights were out so my roommate without a pacreas was already sleeping. The surgeon and I talked pretty quietly. I could see where to sign the form because of the dim light over my bed and the fluorescent glow coming from the hallway.
“Is this going to happen for real?” I asked. I’d been crying in a hospital bed the day before for about an hour and was dubious. They had pushed me to the side of the waiting room for a spinal tap, but the doctor assigned to do the tapping refused* because I had a brain tumor and he thought it was risky.
I was in the waiting room in a hospital gown alone while outpatients listened for their name to be called, loved ones dutifully standing by. They were in street clothes. Some were holding hands.
I was a snotty display of fear, as it turned out, for nothing because the doctor refused.
I don’t blame anyone there for what happened. Sometimes things suck. But I was traumatized and wondering how much more public trauma I should expect.
“I promise you, it’ll happen,” he said without any detectable emotion.
“OK. All I ask is that you explain everything to my husband when he comes back to the room later. I don’t think I will remember everything, and he might have questions.”
***
After Dan had a chance to speak with the doctor, I asked him if he’d stay until I fell asleep. He said he really needed to get home and get some sleep himself.
Of course, I’d be anesthetized. He’d be awake and a nervous wreck.
He hugged me and left.
I have written extensively about the things that made me angry, but not so much about the things that broke my heart and made me feel abandoned.
I didn’t cry that night. Because big girls don’t cry.
*Two residents did it the next day instead. I was promised Xanax, which I didn’t get. And Dan will tell you just how slippery spinal fluid is.
Jun 20, 2025 | Anxiety, Personal
Two of four fillings are in. I didn’t want to go to the dentist yesterday but I managed. I headed to the garage without saying I was leaving, and was a little surprised that Dan was waiting upstairs (he snuck around back) to help me after making my ascent on the stair lift.
Not that he would ever leave me without support. I was just trying to be stubbornly quiet about it. Mom was taking me to my appointment, and I figured bothering him would rattle me more than him.
Several times during the drlling, I tensed up severely. Not because of any pain. I was good and numb. But because the high-pitched sound of the drill was so disconcerting.
I stared at a ceiling tile while bits of spit and ground up tooth entered my line of sight. Repeating soothing mantras in my head, I relaxed the muscles I could control. (I have doubts sometimes my trapezius will ever relax. It’s been in flexion since 2014 and that tension only intensified in 2017.)
Anyway I tried to soothe myself several times in 30 minutes. I was very aware of the physical symptoms of anxiety as they were washing over me.
Awareness is key. Everything I’ve read assures me of that, and the progress I’ve made confirms it. The trick, however, is not spiralling once I know what’s going on.
With disorders like this, awareness at this stage means I panic about all the things I can’t control when I get panicked.
This GAD shit is just vicious.
Vicious.
On the agenda for next week are my outpatient PT, MRI, and CT scans. We’ll see how that goes. I was slow and unsteady yesterday. My right side did that whole “nobody move and nobody gets hurt” thing that happens when I’m stuck in freeze mode. I almost fell when we got home, but self-corrected.
That’s not nothing.
Jun 19, 2025 | Anxiety, Personal
Sometimes I chastise myself for overthinking things, especially when it comes to anxious thoughts. However, I’ve realized that no one else is going to analyze this stuff for me.
I do self-guided therapy because of the expense (financial and otherwise) of traditional therapy. So thinking about things deeply is to dwell in the belly of the beast. It is not pleasant, but feels necessary.
And that’s about all the context needed for readers of today’s blog therapy session.
When I was very young, like maybe four, we went on a vacation with my grandpa that included a family reunion in South Dakota.
Somewhere along the way we stopped at an indoor water park. My grandpa was supposed to catch me coming down a short slide into a pool that was small and maybe four feet deep. At my age, it might as well have been twenty feet deep.
As I was going down the slide, my dad was launching off of a trapeze in the big pool. Grandpa turned to look at his son as I was coming down the slide and didn’t catch me. I was in over my head, and I couldn’t swim. There was much coughing and sputtering complete with the burning sensation of chlorinated water in my nose and lungs.
After all the warranted fussing, the adults tried to coax me back in the water with a flotation device, but I would have none of it. My lizard brain figured my odds of not drowning were better if I just stayed out of pools.
(I hated pools until junior high, and probably would have hated them longer if I was OK with my classmates knowing I was a big weenie.)
For reasons that seem obvious to only me, anytime Dan looks at something shiny when I am trying to keep my balance, I flip the fuck out and have a panic attack.
Falls are the new drowning.
On my way back downstairs after a recent session of occupational therapy, Dan looked away from me as I white-knuckled the Rollator from carpet to vinyl. Seeing him distracted while I felt unsteady, I said, “My brain needs you to pay attention to me!”
Onlookers may have been shocked at the terror in my voice. I wasn’t.
It’s been about 24-hours of barely speaking to Dan since yesterday’s stalemate. I’ve decided that I don’t want the burden of his anxiety when some days I’m barely capable of handling my own.
He can face his anxiety or not, but I don’t feel calm. And the only way I see to avoid serious regression is to minimize the number of panic attacks I endure.
Unfortunately, while the quiet tension mounts, I remain in a cycle of disordered panic. I can’t sleep, my feet are cold, I spend hours at a time curled up in a fetal position. I recognize the physical pain of being tight and closed, but it’s involuntary. It seems as soon as I stretch out, I find myself in a ball again. With no idea how I got there.
So I went all of today not asking for his help with anything. That way I don’t have to navigate the guilt of his sighs or listen to him remind me that he’s been in pain for 30 years now.
To be clear, I am not dismissive of his chronic illness. It’s just, to be perfectly blunt, his PsA doesn’t cure my fucking cancer. I keep reminding myself I didn’t choose this tumor. But I don’t want to have to keep reminding myself. I’m tired of reminding myself. I feel like I’ve earned a little tantrum, as a treat.
For eight years I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen, “I want one thing not to be a fight.” And my progress with PT? Well, no fight! It was glorious!
But here I am fighting again when I feel pretty strongly I shouldn’t have to. I can be stubborn and entitled too. Like, dude, work on yourself because your anxiety and depression clearly affect me. And I DO. NOT. WANT.
Ninety percent of the anxiety I experience now is me trying to determine what my giant man-baby needs so his fee-fees don’t get hurt.
Because he won’t just say it out loud. And he acts like he’s doing me some big favor by holding everything in.
Launch the patriarchy into the sun, I say!
