Anxiety

*This was originally meant to be posted the first week of September but school started and life happened and then it was the end of the month.*

Anxiety.

That feeling when, after paying for a purchase, you turn to your child and they’re not where they were 30 seconds ago.  You look around you and you don’t see them.  That intense sensation before you spot them at a display just a few feet away.

Anxiety.

That feeling that you get when your mother doesn’t pick up the phone for the third day in a row.  That feeling in your stomach as you try to think of every reason why she’s not picking up and push away the thought of her lying dead in her home.

Anxiety.

When you hold your breath for a moment as the spinner spins rapidly on the game board and you wait to see if you’ve won the game or lost your turn.

Anxiety is a normal and natural emotion humans experience.  We all experience it multiple times in our lives.  Some things will trigger most people’s anxiety, others are very specific to the individual.  We need this unpleasant emotion for survival, it’s what pumps your adrenaline so you can outrun the chasing animal or lift a car to save the person trapped under it.  It serves as a deterrent from dangerous situations like crossing the street when the light is red.  And for most of us, once the stressful situation passes the adrenaline works itself out of our systems and we feel better.  If it was an especially big stressor, we may be “jumpy” for a couple of hours or even days after the situation passes but then we’re ok.

An anxiety disorder happens when this system that is meant to help us doesn’t work properly, causing havoc on a person’s life.  It presents itself in different ways but the end result is the same: what should have been only a slight spike in anxiety that passes in moments turns into debilitating events.

Nicholas has an anxiety disorder.

Lessons: "Defying Gravity"

Most people don't know Nicholas is a Rainbow Baby.  I was young and in school when I was pregnant with him and I have always been seen as the "good girl" so most people can't imagine me getting pregnant before Nicholas.  No one knew about my first other than one of my roommates and her boyfriend, who drove me to the hospital that frightening night.  But before Nicholas there was another that didn't make it.  So when I found out I was pregnant with Nicholas I wanted to keep it quiet until after that first uncertain trimester.  But as fate would have it there were issues from the beginning and at about 6 weeks I was told he had a "marker" for down syndrome.  I felt I had to prepare my family for this "tragic" posibility*.  That marker, and a new one, were present at a second ultrasound at 12 weeks.  Two separate screening blood tests confirmed it.  Fortunately, they were all wrong and Nicholas does not have down syndrome.

Rewind about two years before the year I was pregnant with Nicholas, back to 2005.  I made a trip up to Hollywood, like I did every so often, and went by the Pantegeous Theatre.  Wicked was playing and I remember seeing the signs in front of the theatre and wishing to be able to see it some day.  As a full time student I did not have the money for a ticket but someday!  I checked out the CD from my university library and copied it on to my computer and fell in love.