We climbed Mount Baldy today. I friggin hate that mountain it brings to the surface everything I currently loathe about myself yet I climb it still perhaps it’s the fetish in me. Yet today as my husband and boys took off from the base I could see them waiting for me from a point. This game of catch up continued for half an hour and till I said just go on without me, so they did.
It was about half way up that my heart started to hurt some more, or perhaps it was my lungs. I don’t know, but I stopped turned to pretend to look at the view then realised that I was alone. They had gone like I said to {naturally}. I could no longer see them they were so far in front that there were possibly at the top. I started to cry that I was extra weight to them. That my extra weight was holding them back; then in between the panic of holding them back the hurting of heart and lungs I found myself in the middle of an anxiety attack.
An anxiety attack that I was holding my family back. That because of me that perhaps my husband would be a lot further in life than what I allow him to be. All that came from telling them to go on ahead and them doing so. You see it’s a running joke in my house that husband would be a billionaire if it weren’t for me saying no to all his grand schemes and great ideas. Suddenly at that moment it wasn’t a joke I was. For those that have never suffered an anxiety attack its hard to describe but for me my heart races, I can hear it in my ears. I want to run, but I can’t my feet are stuck, I can’t think or I think too much, I cry and I want to hide.
However stuck on the side of a mountain in a fluoro purple jumper there was no hiding. There is no tree big enough now to hide me. I could have run up the hill to my family but at this point my heart was already racing, and I was sure I was on the verge of a heart attack. I was hurting and I was cold. So I waited because the thing is when I stopped taking that little white pill twelve months ago the one to control the anxiety of myself I knew this would happen one day. I would get mad, I would get anxious I would get scared but these are feelings, and I control them. I understood then like I did today that like all things, these ‘feelings’ would pass I just had to learn how to deal with them at the moment when it happened. I had to remember that was in control. I decided back then that if I didn’t learn how to handle them then I would never learn and continue to rely on those little white pills forever something I didn’t want.
{It has to be mentioned those little white tablets saved my life once. And if I or my doctor didn’t think I was in the right space I would still be on them now but through self-care I am}
It’s been a long time since I had one of these ‘moments’, and I often wondered how I would cope. So getting one on the side of the mountain I waited there was no room to excuse myself too so I waited. I knew what this was because I’m honest enough now to accept that anxiety doesn’t make you some flitting weak creature that people need to treat like some fragile material it makes you strong. So there in the now I waited for the sensory overload to pass. For the over thinking to give. For my breathing to calm and my crying to stop because that’s what I have learnt. That they will pass and I’m uglier after the uglier cry and a trek up a mountain.
All these things pass. If you can just remember that in that moment of eternity but all these feelings go with time. It might mean your stuck where you are for little longer than you need to be but you will soon be on your way. On your way knowing that you survived, and it didn’t get the better of you.
I made it up that sucker Mount Baldy my husband and children made it a good ten minutes before, but I made it.
You okay my husband said.
Yeah, I had a moment I said. I had never told him before that I had a moment.
Want to tell me? Initially I shook my head as I tried to control the lump that had formed in my throat.
If you don’t tell me we can’t fix it, I nodded.
So that mountain today it didn’t get the better of me both in body nor soul.
