breathe

A panic day? Come on now. What the hell.

Yesterday after work I drove to drop something off for my grandmother -- she's in an assisted living facility and hates it -- and I'm not a wonderful granddaughter, because I hardly ever visit. Old folks' homes depress me in general, however nice they are -- there's so much sadness and loneliness saturating the walls and the air that I can't breathe and it makes me want to run out the doors and drown myself in the lake. I don't know what our society is doing, but I don't see all these corrals for the elderly as a step in a positive direction. I know it's not a problem with an easy answer -- people are living longer and needing medical care that family members can't give them, nearly every adult works so there are fewer stay-at-home parents to help with their own aging parents, nuclear families (such as they exist) want their privacy and feel tired and worn out by the pointless demands and endless spiritual drains of modern living, etc. And I'm not letting myself off the hook for being a bad granddaughter, either. Most of the time lately I forget (maybe that's even worse than just not going on purpose, but in fairness I forget a lot of things right now), and it taxes a lot of my reserves to visit with my grandmother because she's a real downer, and has chosen to be unhappy, but I should see her anyway.

It wasn't easy, though, yesterday. She looked so longing and wistful and sad when I left that I hurried out to my car fighting tears.

When I arrived home our weekend company was settling in -- my cousins John and Linda from Virginia, and their two daughters, aged seven and twelve. I really like them a lot -- Linda is the daughter of my dad's oldest biological sister (who is fourteen or fifteen years older than my dad), and she married a brilliant man with a quiet, wicked sense of humor, and their girls are lovely. I hadn't seen them in years, not since their oldest daughter was three or four, and I'd never met the youngest.

I wasn't sure how I would react to the intrusion of lively guests; sometimes I'm fine, and other times I turn into a variation of Emily Dickinson and hide upstairs. It was nice, though. I like the girls. They're pretty intense, so I was exhausted by bedtime last night, and their similarities to my sister and me kept giving me weird emotional flashbacks, especially since they both compete for my attention and my heart gets wrung out for both of them -- not because John and Linda aren't good parents; quite the opposite; but because...well, just because. Jenna, the oldest, seeks out my attention in a non-intrusive, self-contained, quiet way (she's like me); Anna, the youngest, makes no bones about how much she likes me and demands to be around me (she's like my sister).

So last night I worked hard to divide the attention equally, because I remember how much I needed affection as a girl, and how seldom I asked for it, and how much it hurt me to feel passed over for my more vivacious little sister; and I remember how much my sister starved for some connection because it didn't come easily to her and she needed to know that adults liked her as much as they liked her hard-working, overachieving, well-behaved older sister.

I was tired enough that I slept straight through the night, but I woke up headachey and exhausted, and I could feel the shakiness coming on (effing anxiety). And again it's not like I'm in a terrible mood; my mood is pretty okay; but I feel generally like shit underneath the okay mood, and if the way my face muscles feel is any indicator, I have an expression that looks like I just walked into a wall. But I took a pill and it has started to sink in, so now I'm just pretty tired, and half-amused, half-frustrated at how this thing is dogging me. (And I'm not a dog person! Go away, anxiety! Shoo, depression! Sit! Lie down! Stay!) I am in a better place, though, because I can laugh at it, a little, though the tears are quivering in the wings. I want a nap.

I'm trying to keep a good outlook on the whole thing -- I'm speaking kindly to myself, and concentrating on not being angry with myself for what feels like extremely slow progress, and praying for Christ's love to soothe and sustain me (Jesus loves me, this I know...), because if God is with me in this, I have everything I need (yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me...), and I want to be at peace wherever I am in this cycle of chemical im/balance.

It can be so hard to breathe, sometimes. Air is something I have to fight for, and focus on; breathing is something I sometimes have to remember to do. (Application of Thich Nhat Hanh's conscious breathing technique is suddenly necessary.)

At least we're doing some family singing tonight, so I should be able to close my eyes and lose myself in harmonies (and take deep, well-regulated breaths). Everything is always better with music.