Let Me Introduce You to My Friend, Crazy Widow Brain. We're Not Really Friends.





Not sure what to write. Do I tell the story of Dan's death? Do I want to go there tonight? Usually when I do I have to stop in the middle and take anxiety pills. Just thinking about it makes me want to take anxiety pills. I guess I won't go there tonight. Lets talk about anxiety instead, both mine and Baby Girl's (who is no longer a baby but a big girl of 9). Her dad always called her Baby Girl, so I think that is how I shall refer to her here.


I never used to have anxiety. In fact I thought people with anxiety just simply couldn't get their shit together. I felt bad for them, but I really didn't understand it at all. I have learned my lesson. It's like,  before you have kids and you think you know how to parent, but once you have your own you learn real quick that this is not what you thought it was. Anxiety is not what I thought it was. I have no control, I can not simply get my shit together, it doesn't work like that. I can be logically thinking in my brain that this is ridiculous, and yet I can't stop thinking it. Mostly, anxiety comes out in Baby Girl and me in fear. We are both afraid something bad is going to happen. Anything. It is a part of anxiety and it is a part of PTSD, which we both got the night Dan died. Because now we know. Now we know bad things do happen to good people and there's nothing we can do about it. It sounds like a cliche but that's what it is.

Let me tell you a fun story to help explain it.

At the moment we live with Dan's parents. Dan's parents are absolutely awesome and spoil us rotten. They are so good to us that I'm not really sure why I'm planning to move out. Dan was born in this house. It is way out in the country, and it's quiet, and peaceful, and safe. I have been in this house approximately 746,000 times. I love it here. I can totally relax. For about a year before Baby Girl was born, Dan and I lived in the spare room they built in their garage. It was Dan's room when he was in high school. It's a good room.

A couple weeks ago, Baby Girl had a friend spend the night and they wanted to sleep in the garage room as a fun adventure. This is what my anxiety (or, as I like to call it, Crazy Widow Brain) said to me:

"They can't sleep in the garage room! That's way too far away from the main house! It's all the way out in the garage. What if something happened and I wasn't be able to hear them? What if they needed me? They can't walk all the way through the house in the dark. It's too far. They could fall and get hurt! What if someone broke in the window and kidnapped them? We would never know, because they are all the way out in the garage! No! I can't let them do it; it's just not safe."

Imagine this playing through my brain like a car stereo turned up really really loud. At the same time, there is this tiny little mouse whisper, saying,

"You are being ridiculous. They are fine. It's fine. This is the safest place in the world; none of that is really going to happen," but it's a tiny mouse whisper and the other one is a blaring stereo.

So what is a Crazy Widow Brain to do? Luckily for me, I have some of the best friends in the entire world, who love me and my CWB for what we are. So I told one of them what CWB was saying, she slapped CWB around, and said,

"Give them a walkie-talkie and let them sleep in the garage."

Sometimes I don't think I can trust Crazy Widow Brain, but I know I can trust my best friends, so I did what she said.  Then ten minutes before bedtime the girls came in and said they were too scared to sleep in the garage, so they slept on the living room floor instead. EVERYONE WINS.

For Baby Girl, anxiety comes out in lots of different ways. She's never even heard of anxiety before. She has no idea what it is or what it does. What she does know is that she gets tummy aches all the time, especially when we go somewhere. What she does know is that if she lets her cat outside, something bad will happen to it; it will get lost, eaten, hurt, something. So we have an inside cat because we must keep it safe. What she does know is that she used to love slumber parties, and now she's scared to go to them.

What she does know is that she doesn't want Mommy to leave her, ever. And what she can sense is that, even though Mommy promises and promises that she will come back, Mommy doesn't even believe that all the way herself. It's hard to convince a 9 year old when you're not 100% convinced yourself. After all, Daddy said he would see her in the morning, and he never came back.

Sadly, these are only a few examples of the many many lies anxiety tells me; the anxiety I never had before or even understood. Now I know. Most days I think we are both drowning in anxiety.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

Comments

  1. David PetraitisJuly 24, 2016 at 11:54 AM

    It helps sometimes having names four our crazy brain voices... we can then identify them and dialog with them. Sometimes we can turn down the volume, or even get them to shut up. Some occasions, Everyone Wins.

    ReplyDelete

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