Limits

For many a life that is limited is hard to imagine. Yet, that is my life in more ways than one. It must have been about 10 years ago that I learned what I was really dealing with. Now 10 years later I am still struggling to grasp all that my life has become. I find it hard to ever explain myself to anyone. Truth is noone can ever imagine how someone with such a simple life to strugle doing the most mundane of things. To the outside world I appear healthy, normal, well adjusted. It seems that really is all of us on some level.
Many times I thought I would have put this behind me by this point in my life. I have had therapy, medicine, family support and on and on. I feel very lucky and fortunate in many ways to have gotten all that help. Yet, at the end of the day it is I who must walk this journey. I think having anxiety seems to put you face to face with yourself like nothing I have ever experienced. The fear that is felt many times on a daily basis is so very lonely. It doesn't matter who is with me, I could even be on stage and have thousands before me ready to comfort me. Yet, the feeling is complete lonelyness. The fear is so intense that I would love nothing more than to have an out of body experience to escape the grasp of it. Every single time I feel like death is at my doorstep. The crippling adrenaline as most have never experienced. The heart pounding so hard and fast that I become unconsolable. That feeling in the pit of your stomach as if someone has died. Feeling like you are on fire. The worst yet is the dizziness and jelly legs. Many times I just feel as though I am going to pass out. I might be in a store and the noise is magnified ten fold the lights are so bright to me I feel I need sunglasses inside. Having my nerves so sinsitized makes it kinda hard to enjoy life.
As I have gone to therapy I am told not to fear the symptoms...it is the symptoms you fear and not the places that you go. I am still struggling to not fear the symptoms. Somehow all of those symptoms as intense as they are just paralize me! I am supposed to feel the fear and do it anyway. Well sounds easy enough until you are in the situation...
I have everything I could have ever wanted in my life today...my future looks so bright and fulfilling. Yet, the one thing I want more than anything in this whole great big beautiful world...I can't just go purchase. I want to be able to travel all over the world. I want to be able to enjoy a simple stroll through a beautiful museum. To see a movie on the big screen. To play tennis with new friends. To go walking through the mall. To sit outside on the patio at a resturante and just people watch. To just go to a resturant. I would also love to go to a grocery store with comfort and enjoy myself. All of these things I haven't done for years. You didn't hear wronge I did mean it has been years. Money can't buy that for me...people can't do it for me. It is all mine to experience and yet I have been unable to experience it at all. Those are truly the simplest of things and yet I would kill to have those experiences in my life again.
This weekend, my wonderful husband and I headed to Southlake. I have always loved the shopping square. I have had good days where as long as I park right in front of the store I can go in a look a bit. Recently, we went to return a shirt to jcrew I had ordered online. It was the second time we tried to return it. My husband has become a great support person. The goal was to get me into this store. Simple right? We had to park further than I wanted which made me very uneasy. Then we get out and walk towards the store as my husband coaches me. We get to the store and I feel ok at this point. We walk up to counter and then I am even feeling ok enought to look around. Then it hits me paralizing fear! I try to contain it and not fear....huh yeah right! I end up walking right out as I do I am sweating, my heart is pounding so much so I feel my pulse all over my body. I feel my legs turn to jelly. I almost tripped on the curb trying to get back to my "safe place" the car. I must have looked drunk! Mind you I had even taken a little bit of xanax earlier that day. SO who knows how bad that attack might have been without the meds. I cried that day as I often do. Feeling like a person looking in on life from the outside. As we drove around the square I looked at all the young vibrant pretty people enjoying a drink on the patio of a resturant or strolling down the street window shoping...I envied them as if they were royalty...To me all those people were! The simpliest of things taken for granted by them all even me at one point in my life. I know I am not the only person in this world with a lesson to be learned. Just was compeled to write tonight...