The Midlife Nurse

Today I have had the most unrealistic and crippling anxiety. Totally and utterly consumed by the wildest thoughts and feelings that’s physically caused me pain. My chest is tight, my stomach churning and head is full of a thousand thoughts like I’m in a crowded room full of people yelling over each other. There are work conversations in my brain, arguments I’ve had with friends. I’m even reliving heartbreak from exes, wanting to make wrongs right, and stressing about financial issues.

Just the most crashing sense of foreboding and losing my rational thought processes descended on me. I have lost all control of sense and reality. I cannot understand it or work out how to stop it. I’ve tried to eat better today, drink herbal teas like “snooze” and “peace”. I’ve texted my friends – some I’ve FaceTimed. I’ve distracted myself. All the things I’m supposed to do to alleviate symptoms of menopause. There’s no way to lift this feeling. I’ve berated a friend for not listening and empathising when I think all she’s trying to do was make me understand the actual reality and the mistakes that I’d regret should I continue with some of my hair brained plans to contact “those who do not wish to be contacted”. She like everyone else, who isn’t experiencing what I am at the exact moment that I am experiencing it, cannot know how it feels. But she lets me tell her she’s not helping, and still love me. You have to be in it to win it. Or maybe wing it. Perhaps that’s what I’ve done today. Winged it. Definitely don’t want to win. Not with the choices I would have made 😳 no win win situation for sure!

Anyway. A bath and a cheesy jacket later and I have a modicum of sanity shining through my armour of irrational exuberance and calm may well be restored.

I’m screaming out for validation. But in the wrong places. I only need validation from myself. And I’m lacking in that direction. sorely lacking. However now exhausted, I appear to be allowing more of that exuberance and calm to settle in. And I could just weep.

But instead I’m going to look at my breakfast/lunch combo and smile 😊 because it’s passing. The overwhelming anxiety that consumes one’s body and mind, passes….. eventually. Be patient. Just be patient. And kind.