Excuse me...

while I derail a bit from my happy blog life and get in yo' face with some serious shizz. While we're at it, excuse me for saying shizz, too. I really meant to say shit.

 I've been feeling a little overwhelmed lately which is why I haven't been on so long. There have been a lot of personal things I've been going through but I'm slowly working through them bit by bit. For the sake of self-preservation I won't be sharing all the deets with the blogosphere, but there is one thing I'm willing to talk about.

Everything is fine - myself, the family, etc...except about a couple months ago I was plagued by some severe anxiety that I just couldn't shake. I had similar moments following my accident back in '06 but they were rare and hardly lasted but a few minutes. This most recent episode lasted weeks. The initial panic only hung around for about 30-45 minutes but the aftershock of depression incapacitated me for weeks. It was awful. I lost all motivation for EVERYTHING I had going on, I felt detached from everyone, including my kids, and it was all I could do to hang on.

I suppose right here would be a good place to stop and say my thoughts NEVER went to suicide - in fact it was the complete opposite. I lived in this cyclone of dread that something was going to happen to me. I think because of the trauma I've been through I think about death more than the average person, and the night that this all happened the stage was set perfectly. Everyone else was in bed and the house was dark and my mind was wandering before I fell asleep, and I went to that place. I'm not a control freak (at least I think I'm not, don't ask Nick) but the complete lack of control that I have over death, that anyone has over it, scares the hell out of me.  So what do I think about, in bed, wide awake with a wandering mind? Yep - death. Hello, anxiety, my old friend.  Normally I'm able to switch it off and distract myself long enough to snap out of it and get my mind on more positive things, but not this time. I thought on that happy subject for a good half hour, to the point where the panic started to physically manifest itself in my bones, causing every muscle in my body to tense up and gave me the feeling that the room was too small and there wasn't enough air. The next morning I woke up and the feeling of dread was with me. What was the point of everything, if we're just going to die? I'm not known to be completely rational in these moments, but that's what it is, I guess. In complete fear I detached myself from people and moped around. I asked several people, whom I'm sure thought I lost my marbles, what they thought about death and started trolling online forums to hear different perspectives. I'm not sure what I needed to hear, or what I wanted to hear. I just needed to know that I wasn't alone. Eventually I got sick of feeling like shit - something had to give. I started distracting myself with people and projects from sun up to sun down, including leaving the television on until I fell asleep so I wouldn't lose myself in my thoughts, to get myself out of my funk. It took a week, but it worked for me.

 Not long after though, I had a couple more incidents where the anxiety started creeping back, for no particular reason, so I decided to see my doctor about it. He prescribed me something that, so far, seems to be working, along with the added therapy of talking to my close knit friends and family that talk me through it. I've found that I shut down when people tell me to relax, or mock my irrationality (because I AM completely irrational in these moments) and just need someone to talk me through those moments and explain to me why what I think is going to happen, isn't. Figuring that out has also helped me to help others help me (still there?) as far as what I need from them in a moment of anxiety.

 So, that's pretty much what I've been dealing with, in a nutshell. It doesn't quite seem like a nutshell to me, but I suppose I could have elaborated more but it's late and I'm recovering from a weekend in Cali with the family. It was a lot of fun meeting new family and I've got some pictures of the boys on the beach I'll share soon. I don't have any projects in the works at the moment (with how to's at least) but I'll be finishing some up that I've been working on that I'll share as well. I know this post was a bit of a downer, but I figured I'd share it so that if anyone else ever feels this way, they'll know that they're not alone. That's a sad thing to feel, especially when it's not true - not even in the slightest.