High Anxiety

Anxiety and I have been living together for long time now. Over the years I have adapted to this inconvience, and have learned to live with strange phobias and mild fears. We know each other in a way that one would know their best friend. However, we have yet to come to friendly terms. This is unfortunate.

I long for the day when I can look anxiety in the eye and not be afraid of it's outlandish and often unpredictable behavior. A day where I could maybe, possibly even find humor in the situations that it brings me.

For now though, I live in constant fear.

Like I told my husband last night, the fears I have are as illogical and outragous as if I had a phobia of watching I Love Lucy on t.v. Sounds incrediebly silly doesn't it? Well it is. My fear of driving over the mountain and being alone are totally unfounded. After all I've managed to do this very thing hundrends of times without any incident. And yet, it scares me to death.

Having this fear has been very crippling. Gone are the days, where I would jump at the chance to have a few hours or hopefully a full day to myself at home. Something that didn't come often, since my husband works from home. No longer do I like to do the things that used to excite me because of this fear.

Since I don't want to ruin my marriage and my mentality over an unrealistic anxiety, I started thinking what in the world happened to make me the way I am right now? As my husband pointed out last night, I need to have confindence that my body has the ability to survive.

This gave me pause. You know what? He's right. Why don't I have that ability right now? I used to have it. How could I have been so careless as to loose this precious ability as one would loose their keys? Then I remembered something that happened last July that triggered the first anxious flutterings in my brain.

A backpacking trip. Sounds benign enough. However, it was quite an adventure, not to mention a test of physical and mental endurance.

Long story short, I got sick the first day and was feeling pretty bad. Since I was having, shall we say, digestive issues in a place ill equipped for such an problem, I thought it best to go home a day early. Not to mention, and this is my anxiety talking, I was afraid that If I needed medical attention, I couldn't seek it since I was literally in the middle of nowhere.

Being a very hot day, we waited til late afternoon before we made our treck back to the car. The hike back should have taken us about 4 hours, so we didn't pack any food, and only had one water bottle each. People, this is very very dumb. I cannot stress that enough.

If you can see where this is going, you are smarter than we were. Yes we got lost. Not only could we not find the trail back to the car, we took it upon ourselves to scale a mountain we had no business being on, in an attempt to find a shortcut to a trail that may or may not be at the top.

My fears of not making it to the car in time, became a reality as night came, and we were only three quarters the way up the mountain. Faced in the situation of a real fear coming true, I was surprisingly calm (what else could I do?). We put up our tent in the only "flat" area we could find, and waited for daybreak.

Like I said we had no food, and having not eaten during the day I was quite hungry. However, the stomach would have to wait as no sooner then we tried to fall asleep, something very loud and very big sounding made it's way right to our tent. Bears weren't really a problem in the area, so my only guess was a moutain lion. Not a friendly thought. Luckily my husband managed to scare it off (my hero!). The next morning shaking with hunger, dehydration, and fear (I was anyway), we made our way to the top and thank god, found the trail, made it to the car, and went for breakfast.

Moral of the story? Don't ever, ever go hiking or backpacking without enough food and water (DUH). Also, and this is the ironic part when it comes to my anxiety, I realized that when put to the test, your body has the amazing ability to charge on and power through when times are hard.

Like my husband said I need the confidence to know my body will make it despite my fears.
I faced this exact thing on the mountain. Why is it then, that I'm so fearful of the what if's? Especailly since I faced those what if's in the wilderness and you know what?

I survived!