anxiety Archives - Page 4 of 6 -

Are you done with this boy?

December 6, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Living in a new house in a new city with no furniture and no routine and a toddler who’s getting bored is fun. Really fun.

Okay it sucks.

I think I officially ran out of patience today. And my husband is sick again, so he’s not the happiest camper either.

I tried to address the situation by taking Connor to the park today to frolic in the snow and build a snowman, but it was a spectacular failure. (Did you read The Snowman Test of Motherhood? I haven’t passed yet.) Between that, a request to “fix” his Lego monster truck 46 times, and one of those million-questions kinds of days, I had had enough by about 3 p.m.

That’s probably when I should have realized going to a restaurant across town for dinner with my mother-in-law was a bad idea. But no! We had a gift certificate and we wanted to go because it’s a place we like. Let’s just say it didn’t go so well, and that’s why my husband and I looked at each other across the table and laughed when this conversation took place:

Connor: “Dad, why did you give me ALL the croutons?”

Dad: “Because that way you’ll have them if she comes back and asks if we’re done with this bowl.”

Connor: “Did you say ‘if we’re done with this BOY‘?”

[Commence smirking.]

What? You would have found it appealing too. At least the salad bowl doesn’t poke other diners and talk in an outside voice in the middle of the restaurant.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: anxiety, rants, toddlers are weird

Chasing Sunsets

December 5, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

We’ve lived here for a week. It feels like our house although it doesn’t yet feel like home.

Late last week it snowed. A lot. I watched it come down, my response to this first snowfall as a permanent resident of this winter town nothing less than total glee. I love snow like no one else I know.

I have two boys who have been sick on and off since we arrived (I suspect their tummies react to stress like my back does, which is to say angrily) and a dog who appears to be settling in all right, although for the first few days he was velcroed to us like a shadow, desperate to make sure he wasn’t left behind in this strange new place.

But he, too, likes the snow. We’ve been walking, up and down streets, exploring this strange new place. There are jack rabbits on the streets and at night they bound ahead of us, surprising me. I’m not used to them – deer yes, large rabbits no. Surely nothing with that much bounce and determination could be a bunny, I think, but they are, their ears and large hind legs coming clear under the street lights.

We’re the last community at the western-most edge of the city—the city limit sign is right around the corner—and when we head out from home it’s just a couple of turns and a short stretch of road before we get to the outer edge. That’s my favourite thing so far. We round a bend in the road and there before us are mountains as far as the eye can see – right to left, the whole horizon is filled with snow-covered crags. It’s as though you can see the whole of the Canadian Rockies right there outside our doorstep. My breath catches every time. I will never tire of it.

Tonight I was coming home from the grocery store at sunset and it looked like the mountains were on fire. Large swaths of pink and blue, with one peak a fiery gold. I chased the sunset – driving up and down streets looking for the best view. No photo I took did it justice. I could have stayed out there forever watching the sun rise and fall, rise and fall, leaving the mountains alight.

We don’t yet have our stuff (though we bought a new bed, and thank goodness). Apparently the rest may arrive tomorrow and we’ll finally be able to settle in. I’ve been living on anxiety and adventure, swinging from one to the next like a monkey on a vine. I’m looking forward to less of the former and more of the latter. I’m looking forward to furniture and a shorter to-do-to-get-settled-in list. I’m looking forward to tromping through snow and chasing more sunsets.

Chasing sunsets is good for the soul.

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Filed Under: Happy things, Hard things · Tagged With: anxiety, favourite activities, living life, perspective, photos

On Just.Be.Enough: New Kid on the Block

November 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’m still alive! We’ve moved into our new house (if you can call it moving in when you have no furniture and none of your stuff).

Us en route

Connor is sick, my husband is sick, and my back is giving me grief again (it does this thing where it tries to collapse when I’m stressed – fun times). And we have no wifi, so I’m doing all my online stuff the hard way.

But we made it!

By way of further update, I’ll direct you to Just.Be.Enough today where I have a post about adjusting to a new place.

Come visit!

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: anxiety

A is for Anxiety

November 21, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

A week ago last Saturday, I sat down for a bit after a party we hosted so we could see as many people as possible before we move. I hopped on to Twitter and saw a tweet from @moonfrye (aka Punky Brewster) and I didn’t even have to think about how to respond.

We have had so many great visits with friends in the last few weeks. Maybe I’m in denial but I’m not thinking about moving away from all these people, I’m just feeling grateful to have so much love in my life.

I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Blah blah blah. She’s happy. She’s doing something bold. Whatever.” Well, hold on because I’m going to bring it back down to Earth again for a minute.

Elena based this week’s Be Enough Me prompt on that tweet from Soleil Moon Frye. And this week it’s not so easy for me to answer.

Friday was my last day of work and, despite what some people seem to think, I’m not freaking out about having walked away from my job. I’ve been leading up to this for a while and, though it hasn’t entirely hit me yet, I’m mostly just glad that I don’t have to be responsible for certain things anymore. But it turns out sitting at a desk for eight hours a day is a good distraction from other things.

I’ve written before about how I’m nervous about leaving my parents. But I’m not the only one feeling that way.

For my part, I’m acknowledging and anticipating my own angst (and hoping against hope that Connor doesn’t totally freak out when he realizes we can’t just pop up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for a visit) while holding on to the faith that this is the right thing for us to do. A necessary thing, even. I can find that faith when I need it. I just can’t force that faith on my parents.

My mom is in the stomach-lurching, chin-wobbling phase of this process, the one that requires lots of deep breaths and some Kleenex. I know how she feels, because I read a post she wrote a couple of weeks ago about what our move means to her and had the same requirement for deep breaths and tissues. I’m worried about my dad too (for all sorts of reasons, actually) and he’s much less likely to say anything about how he feels about all this.

As for how I feel, well, I feel like I’m doing this to them. They’re talking about moving as well, which would make sense because my brother and one of my sisters live there too, but I don’t think they would necessarily choose that for themselves. It means moving out of a house they like and away from a mild climate to a frigidly cold Canadian winter. There’s a reason they moved here from there in the first place.

So my old friend anxiety has returned to watch this process unfold, bringing its sidekick insomnia with it just to make things extra fun. And I guess that’s how I’m feeling.

Pass the Kleenex.

The first day

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Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: admissions, anxiety, family, telling the truth

The Truth

October 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Just before 4:30 on Friday, I left my afternoon meeting and got into my car. I drove a few blocks and then pulled over to an empty parking spot on the side of the road, pulled out my BlackBerry, and wrote my resignation.

And hit send.

As of November 19, I will no longer be employed at the organization I have worked at for almost six years. I will no longer be employed at all, in fact.

The truth is this causes me a slightly-larger-than-small amount of anxiety.

The truth is it’s more freeing than scary.

When we started talking about making this move I presumed I’d get a job and then move. I applied for some, interviewed, and then sat there waiting for the phone to ring. And one afternoon I realized I was waiting for the phone to ring but hoping it didn’t.

That realization was freeing too.

By all normal logic, I should have a job. My husband is a stay-at-home dad and I have a preschooler who’s growing so fast I’m starting to hope capris become a hot style for three-year-old boys.

We intend to buy a house in Calgary, but with the equity in our current house we’ll be able to do that. We sold that house on Friday – the papers have been signed, the for-sale sign has been flipped, and less than a month from now we’re going to hit the road.

I’ve busted out of the golden handcuffs before and it’s not easy. (One of these days I’ll have to tell you the story about how spending a weekend at an alternative treatment centre with my mom when she had cancer ultimately led me to leave a totally secure job and take a pay cut to do the kind of work I wanted to do.) It hasn’t been easy this time around either. But I have never once doubted it’s the right thing to do, and after all that’s happened over the last few months I’m not prepared to take the wrong job just so I have a job. Sometimes I think you have to just GO. The right job will find me.

“Aren’t you scared?” a good friend of mine asked a few weeks ago. “Shitless,” I answered truthfully. But I’d rather be full of fear for a short time than full of regret forever. (And then last week, for similar reasons, that friend quit his job too. The truth is out there, people. It’s spreading, and it’s AWESOME.)

The truth is we spend too much time being scared. We think “scary” equals “wrong” so we stay scared and we do nothing. We stay the course.

The truth is I think I’d die if I stayed the course. Physically, I already came as close as I care to. I’m not letting what I “should” do steal my soul.

Image credit: kxlly on Flickr

There’s a whole other layer to what’s happening in my work environment right now and, while I decided to move on before that begun, it’s been, frankly, awful. There are things I want to pour on this page, but I can’t. That’s one truth I can’t tell. So I don’t have this outlet and my emotion and frustration and grief over a difficult situation have overflowed elsewhere.

Truth: It’s affecting people I care about, and that’s hard.

Truth: It’s damaged a relationship, possibly irreparably, and I regret that while at the same time feel like I can’t do anything about it.

Truth: It feels like I’m leaving part of me behind in this process. Not just the part I have intentionally ditched, but a good part. A stable part. A rational part.

It’s the truth. But it has consequences.