Today – at least – I snapped a picture of the jacket gifted to a wee gentleman at his 2-year birthday party.
Double-sided fleece, self-drafted pattern. Super-pointy hood and seven hand-made pom poms. Trippin on pom pom-makin, biatches
***
Yesterday morning I wake –
after only a few hours sleep –
to the most oppressive sense of fear.
Slaps me awake and lasts at least half the day. I’m up and I try to do a few things then rest, but I can’t. My mind keeps trying to find a way out of the fear. I can’t think of anything else for long, before jolting back. Might as well make the coffee. Hot shower. Time to get up and go. Got responsibilities.
My mind like to drive me mad. Thinking, thinking, over-thinking. Trying to set it aside but it rises up again through my body. Fear racing through my chest and my kids talk to me, my husband asks after me, and I answer as best I can when I can pull my mind off the fixation. Can they tell? I don’t know. I don’t think so. They’d ask if they knew something was wrong.
Days like today I remember smoking. Pulling on a cigarette, getting that edge. Somehow it always seemed to help, keep me in that space of what I thought was alertness, but in reality: agitation.
And anyway: I quit smoking a while back. And now I’m over the bridge and into breaking sunlight when I know the only thing that will help me, since I’ve done prayer on my knees and lit a candle and eaten food and tried to breathe and tried to quit thinking, is to Help Others. Help Without Regard For Return. It’s not even like I think I get some reward if I help. It’s that the state of Helping takes me somewhere different, and things shift, and clarity comes.
My daughter wraps her arms around me. “Love me,” she says. I hold her and kiss the top of her head, her dry straw-scented hair; Heaven. Later. Running bath water. Kitchen light low. Hot water and a tablespoon of molasses. A heater ticks in the dark. My arm: aching. The laughter of my son in another room.
Cold to the bone, a darkness stretching out. Only a small candle but it’s enough.
I used to suffer from that, terribly. The Slogans helped me tremendously, and still help when I get the occasional bout of unidentifiable fear. Big hugs to you!
I have long had similar bouts of what you describe. Luckily, I think I put my finger on the issue, and the instances have been much less.