post

In Pursuit Of A Dream

When I finished high school 25 years ago, I had the idea that I would become a research psychologist. I was interested in the clinical aspect of it, but I did not think it would suit my socially awkward personality. If I went into research, though, I would be able to satisfy my desire to try and figure out what makes people tick. In some small way, I might even be able to make the world a better place.

I graduated high school with good grades and went off to university to pursue a Bachelors degree with a psychology major.

You know how life has this way of barging in and messing up all your plans?

Life barged in and messed up all my plans. During my second year at university, I met someone who I initially thought was charming, but who turned out to be a chaotic and disruptive force. I compare that part of my life with a tsunami. A gigantic wave rushes in and knocks over everything in its path. When the water recedes, the landscape is completely different. Some things have been turned upside down, others have completely disappeared. Virtually nothing is recognizable, and the only way to move forward is through a process of recovery and reinvention.

One thing is clear: after such a disruption, nothing can ever be the same again.

I did finish my Bachelors degree, but I abandoned the dream. I did not have good enough grades to pursue further studies, and even if that weren’t the case, my sense of self had been so completely obliterated that it would not have been possible.

In the 20-odd years since then, a lot has happened. I spent some time drifting, both metaphorically in my own mind and literally through travel, and eventually washed up in a career. I moved to Canada, had children, got married. I have buried my father, been thrust into the role of special needs mom, started running and discovered a passion for writing.

I have a lot to be thankful for, including the fact that in spite of the storm that I endured all those years ago, I have managed to make a life for myself. There has always been an undertone of regret, though. Regret for the poor decisions I made back then, and regret for the fact that I had a dream that got swept away. While the career I did end up in has been pretty good, I have never been able to shake the feeling that this is not what I want to do, that I have been living my whole adult life in response to things that happened a long time ago.

Maybe I cannot pursue the dreams I had back then. Maybe those dreams belong in the past along with all the ugly stuff that happened there.

What about new dreams, though? Is there anything stopping me from pursuing them?

In a move that has surprised absolutely no-one except myself, I have made the decision to go back to school. I have enrolled in a post-graduate certificate in fiction and non-fiction writing, and this will be followed up with a Masters degree in creative writing.

It is daunting. Quite apart from the extra time commitment that this will involve, my mind keeps drifting back to how my first shot at a university education went so wrong. I freely admit that I am scared. A part of me feels like that naive kid who made dumb choices. On the other hand, though, this might be a chance of personal redemption, an opportunity to get it right.

I owe this to myself, and I owe it to that scared, overwhelmed kid of long ago who gave up a dream.

(Photo credit: Raoul Luoar. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)
post

Tidal Waves of Anxiety

A few nights ago I had an anxiety attack. I have these attacks from time to time and they vary in their intensity, and this one was a real doozie. I woke up abruptly in the dead of night with my heart pounding. I sat bolt upright with a gasp of horror, clutching my chest just like they do in movies. Then I was clawing at the bedsheets, trying desperately to free myself. I got myself out of bed and threw on a bathrobe, ran out of the room, launched myself at the stairs and flung open the back door to let myself onto the deck.

It was some ungodly hour – two or three in the morning – and it was cold and I wasn’t wearing any shoes. But the only thing I could think about was getting air into my lungs to get rid of the feeling of suffocation. I gulped in one lungful after another, and gradually, I came back into focus. I stayed out there for a while to clear my head, and by the time I went back inside and crept into bed, I was kind-of sort-of OK again.

The whole thing was more than a little scary, but not entirely unexpected. There has been so much going on lately. I’ve been working  crazy hours and sacrificing desperately needed sleep just to go for my training runs. Things have been busy with my husband’s business and there has been a lot of family-related stuff going on.

To put it simply, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, and when I get overwhelmed, I invariably reach a point of critical mass – that point at which I just cannot take anymore. I have some kind of meltdown that, while being terrifying to live through, does seem to press a kind of reset button in my head. I feel emotionally bruised for a couple of days, hit a point of exhaustion where I sleep for twelve hours straight (this is not voluntary – it’s kind of forced on me by my body), and then wake up feeling strong again, and ready to tackle whatever needs to be tackled.

Sometimes I can go for months without having a single anxiety attack. Other times, the cycle is continuous, with a new attack starting before I’ve even recovered from the previous one.

Imagine being in the ocean and getting hit by a wave. You get knocked down, and you may accidentally inhale some water. Before you’ve managed to right yourself, while you’re still coughing up that lungful of water, another wave hits – an even bigger one that you didn’t see coming. Too many waves coming at you too quickly, and you feel as if you’re drowning.

It’s the same with the anxiety attacks. I can get hit with one after another after another, in quick succession. There’s the same sense of suffocation, of being in over your head.

The solution, of course, is to make sure you know how to swim and to check the tides before you go into the water. But that only works with the ocean, and even then, the most seasoned swimmers sometimes get caught off-guard.

With the anxiety attacks, it’s not so simple. There may not be a ripple in sight, and before you know it, you’re trying to dodge a tsunami. I cannot always predict how and when they are going to happen, so I’ve figured out that a better course of action is to find ways of dealing with the aftermath.

In the end, though, I am a survivor. There’s no way I’m letting a bit of anxiety beat me down.

Do you suffer from anxiety/panic attacks? Do you live with someone who does? What coping mechanisms do you have?

(Photo credit: the bridge. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)