WANTED: New Body and Mind...

I am so anxious today and really can't even form cohesive thoughts to write this blog.  I have no rhyme or reason for my anxiety.  It could be many things or it could just be how my body and mind are handling stress on this particular day.  It is very frustrating and it makes me crazy.  These are the days when I wish I was a different person in a different body with a different mind that I felt more in control of.  I have been on medication for years to try to manage my anxiety and mild depression but most have either proved ineffective or caused troublesome side effects.  The medication I am currently on, I have been on for several years and it helps, but not enough.  It is amazing to me that I can have these days where I am calm, in the moment, energized, and excited about life and then the next day I am shaky, overwhelmed, scattered, and have a body full of anxiety.  Some of this I think is linked to all the hormonal changes involved in being a woman and how those hormones interact with my predisposition to be anxious or depressed, but what can I do about that?  It makes me feel very helpless.  It is difficult to parent effectively when your mind and body are not cooperating and that then makes me even more anxious.

Nothing gets me down more than feeling like I am not being the parent I want to be.  On these days I often wish that I could just hide in my bedroom staring at the tv or sleeping and not even have to face my kids and try to function in the way that they need.  It takes considerable mental and physical energy to parent two small children on a good day and doing so on a day like today feels impossible.  I manage somehow but feeling like you are just managing many days is not the way I want to live.

I have a lot of inexplicable health issues besides the anxiety that have led me to have many difficult days in the past 4 years--I have been to numerous doctors and specialists (many of whom have been less than helpful or even hurtful), kept multiple charts of my symptoms, researched, given up and then tried again to find answers and no one still really knows what is wrong with me though everyone has different theories.  I will say that my symptoms have improved some in the last month or two and for that I am grateful.  The biggest problem is that it is all very unpredictable and so it is hard to lead any kind of life where plans you make often get cancelled and you can't function some days to do much of anything.  On my good days, I am active, energetic, present, and calm.  On my bad days I am crabby, fatigued, shaky, foggy, and distant.  On my worst days, I have headaches, am nauseous, lightheaded, weak, can't think, and have trouble staying awake I am so tired.  I get sick easily and often I am oscillating between catching some virus and having my unexplained symptoms and being my normal anxious self--sometimes it feels as if there are no good days, though I know there are. I have always had a horrible immune system and been very sensitive to medications and changes in my body,but this all seemed to intensify after having my little guys.

And so the whole point of this is that when my health is bad, my anxiety and depression worsen because I feel like I am not being the wife, mother, friend, daughter that I want to be.  It's a vicious cycle people! But life keeps plugging along and so I do too with hopes that someday things will get better or I'll find the answers I've been looking for.

And now I must be done with this post because the mental energy it took to write this is substantial and I need to go stare at a wall for an hour to recover!