Category Archives: fear

Has anyone seen my patience? I seem to have lost it.

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I used to be a very patient person.  I was never fidgety while waiting in a line.  I knew my turn would come eventually and I was okay with that.

As the years have passed, I now understand where my mother was coming from when she used to say  “my patience is wearing thin”.  Perhaps it is somehow a right of passage that we are less apt to wait today than we may have been a couple of decades ago.  My patience these days resembles something like the onion-skin paper we used to trace pictures when we were in high school.

There are still moments when I am okay to wait, moments that are fleeting and that I know will pass relatively quickly.  But I am currently caught in a circumstance where I feel completely helpless and have no choice but to sit back and wait for information to come to me.  I feel horribly powerless and that is not a feeling I am accustomed to experiencing.

hurry up and wait

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It’s hard to let go.  It’s difficult to convince myself that things are going well at the other end when my imagination continues to conjure hundreds of possible scenarios.  And my lack of patience only fuels the fire of anxiety as I am forced to bide my time until I get some news.

Until then, I shall consume myself with projects to try to keep myself busy enough so I can quell the even more impatient creative writers in my head.  My own restlessness is hard enough to deal with….they will make this waiting period intolerable.

 

 

Perched precariously on the fence

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This is a lofty spot,

this place where I find myself.

I am currently balanced for fear of falling,

but this is a spot I find hauntingly familiar.

There is no right or wrong,

only what is best for me.

And whatever side I choose,

wherever I decide to plant my feet,

that is the direction I was meant to follow.

I can only believe in my truth,

that I cannot make any progress in my life

without making the decision to pick a side.

And once that decision is made,

that fence will no longer seem like an obstacle,

but merely an arrow.

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You can’t have too much of a good thing

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I thought I would have an overwhelming sense of guilt about my day yesterday.  But the truth is, I do not.  I hadn’t deviated from any plan of what I should have been doing but, instead, forged ahead with my original intention and spent the majority of the day on my couch binge-watching the remaining episodes of Breaking Bad on Netflix.  There, I said it….I’m out.

I did manage to feed myself the required meals to sustain my ability to swear at the screen and I did tend to my puppy dog, as the job did seem obligatory.  But any task outside of those parameters took a back seat and I was glued to the screen.

As the credits rolled and I waited for the next episode to begin, I had to face the harsh reality as the screen changed to the standard Netflix screen and not the profile of the characters I have come to know so well.  No longer would I be captivated by Walter White and his transformation from meek Chemistry teacher to the tower of greed and felonious intentions that he slowly became.   I had to call it – time of death, 10:39 pm.

Walter-White-Dead

I will slowly acclimate to the reality I once knew.  My blog will learn to recognize me once again.  My Kindle will be dusted off and my vacuum will feel the familiar touch of my hands as I learn to live my old life.  I’m sure my friends will vaguely recall what my voice sounds like once I pick up the phone to re-establish contact.  I just hope I can remember not to call them all “bitch”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holding on to strength

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worry-zdralea-ioana

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
― Corrie Ten Boom

~~

It is easy to tell someone not to worry.  I am guilty of doing that very thing on an extremely frequent basis and in many different circumstances.  Recently, I have become much more aware of how redundant that statement can be and how little it does to alleviate the concern of the person doing the worrying.

Worry is a big part of the human condition.  We spend countless hours stressing about the things we cannot foresee, cannot control and cannot change.  We are designed to be thinkers, to be problem-solvers, and in those brief moments that we are left without an answer or a contingency plan we submerge under the waves of the unknown.

For as much as I try to not unsettle myself with things out of my control, today was a glaring reminder of how quickly worry can overtake us and truly drain us of our strength.  There is a small path in the carpet in my office where I paced back and forth.  There is an emptiness in my stomach where nourishment should have found its place, but didn’t.  And there is a dull ache in my temple from the inescapable habit of clenching my jaw when I am apprehensive.

Today worry was the cat and I was the feeble mouse.  I was victim to its cunning and could do nothing more than to hide in the metaphorical corner and play dead, hoping that the insidious predator would leave me alone.

Now I sit, writing this post with a slightly more peaceful feeling than I had earlier today.  Worry still beckons, the concerns of tomorrow still evident, but it holds much less power now than it did earlier today.  I have regained some of my tenacity so I can face tomorrow with a new courage.

Worry may be strong but I am stronger.

~~

image credit: Worry by Zdralea Ioana – http://www.fineartamerica.com

The invisible sentinels

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moon

In the wee, small hours of morning,

your concern makes my nerves fray.

Distance creates questions,

that hang in the air unanswered

facial expressions unable to be read,

worry unable to be alleviated.

If I could reach out,

touch your arm for the briefest second,

perhaps that contact would help.

It may ease my worry,

and just maybe it would let you know,

that you never have to face your fear alone.

There is an army behind you,

charging into battle with you,

always there, ready to fight.

Good things come to those who wait

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mouse

The snap of the spring echoed throughout the house.  Nervous whiskers twitched as big eyes peered from the hole in the floorboard.  A lone piece of cheddar sat untouched on the trap.  The second mouse pilfered the cheese without the slightest hesitation.

microstories251

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A womb with a view

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For those about to panic and skip by this blog, this is not a collection of words about childbirth.  This musing is about Magnetic Resonance Imaging or, on an alphabetical scale, an MRI.

I had reason to have an MRI on my knee two years ago after it had swelled to the size of a slightly deflated football.  In hindsight I should have contacted Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, but instead I opted for the less challenging task of calling my doctor.  After  her skillful medical prodding determined I was not a hypochondriac, I was placed on a waiting list for an experience I am hoping to forget but probably never will.

I am not new to hospital procedures.  I have had my fair share of expensive medical equipment scan parts of my body that only a skilled technician should see.  I just regaled a few friends with this tale about how a mammogram and an ultrasound have been the cause of many laughs.  (If you need a good laugh, click on the link.  It’s a really good story).  But having an MRI is an experience like no other when you are prone to enjoy open spaces and breathing normally.

I had done my best to mentally prepare for what I assumed was similar to a Sensory Deprivation Chamber.  I arrived early to undertake the task of filling out reams of paperwork which only made my pulse race faster than it already had been.  I dressed myself in the latest hospital fashion and was led to the room where I would spend the next 45 minutes trapped in a small vessel that made up for its size with its sound.

mri-10

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I can only be grateful that I was not fully immersed in the tube-shaped magnet that would send pulses through the layers of my being.  My head was allowed to be free of the cage in which my body was being held hostage.  With headphones blasting horrific music and the thrum of the machine making me wish that I had chosen to be thrown from an airplane, the scan ensued.

I tried my best to close my eyes and concentrate on the disconnected notes playing on the music channel they had chosen for me.  But I am a curious sort of person and that doesn’t always bode well.  After mistakenly hallucinating for the duration of the scan,  I realized, after the torture was over, that the wall to my left was a live-action wall and that birds had been flying across the screen while I lay, coma-like, on the bed of the scanner.  I was relieved to know it was the hospital’s sick sense of humour and I was not having an aneurysm.  At the end of the process, I was birthed from the giant womb that is the MRI machine and sent, in my swaddling clothes, to the change room to retrieve the belongings that represented freedom – my clothes and my car keys.

I have a dear friend who, as of this morning, will have undergone his first of two MRI’s last night and I can only hope he weathered the first of his two storms with as much of a consequent sense of humour as I now have about my encounter.

And although it is an unpleasant experience, I do hope his womb with a view can provide answers that will help him move forward and begin to feel like himself again.