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Posted in personal, Pirate
March 23, 2016

What a Difference a Week Makes

whitney - le sigh
This was from a few weeks ago. Outtake from a vlog. I paused, made this face, smiled sadly and moved on. Hindsight.  Amazing the things you realize.

My mom could always read me like a book. She can still do it with my voice – but I admit, when I call her, I’m not putting on a mask to hide how I feel. I’m usually stripping it off.

TheBoy was away on a business trip, and it was been a rough week. I knew I struggled with anxiety (the last year has not been kind to me, anxiety wise) And I knew that having him around helped.

Because he can read me like a book. If it’s a bad day, he knows just what to say to remind me that most of what I’m afraid of is my brain trying to sabotage me. For what it’s worth, I do the same for him. But with this trip, we were separated by three hours. Which meant that by the time I’d put the kids in bed, he was ready to sleep.

Without that stabilizer, I found myself spinning. I felt alone, even in a full house. And that right there was a big red flag for me. (The fact that I had to push myself to put on makeup was another one. I love makeup.) And friends who used to help, even if they said the right things… it just wasn’t enough to quiet my head.

When TheBoy popped up on a video call, I had the biggest wakeup call of all. The first words out of his mouth were, “Are you okay?” (I’m paraphrasing, but nobody needs to know pet names) Because he knew, the second he saw me.

That trip of his was an eye opener. It’s time for me to go back to my amazing therapist and see if I need to start seeing the psychologist in his practice, too. Because this isn’t sounding just like anxiety anymore. Because while I’ve been doing really well – things shouldn’t fall apart if my husband takes a trip away for a week.

Kids were taken care of, things were done. But if it hadn’t been for the things I needed to accomplish – I would have fallen apart.

And I’m sure someone reading this is rolling their eyes – but I’m being honest because people don’t talk about anxiety or depression. Or the moments that they realize they’re struggling.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have friends who suffer from both anxiety and depression. Enough to recognize it in myself early on. To have supportive friends and family, who take the time to fact-check my brain.

But it’s not enough. Time to talk to someone about it, before it is one more thing about my life determined to stop me from doing anything.

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