Saying Goodbye to the Vacation I Needed
As I sit on the screened-in porch, curled under my blanket, listening to the sounds of the birds and the turtles splashing in the lake. I can’t help but be a little proud.
I hesitate to use that word because it’s such a foreign feeling to me. It feels wrong to take pride in myself. The thoughts are always negative, so to feel something good feels great. However, it also still comes with self-doubt.
Pride? Doesn’t that make you selfish? Doesn’t that make you sound like you’re conceited and self-absorbed?
I fight back against the mean girl voices, though, by continuing to write. It’s okay to feel pride sometimes. It’s alright to feel your accomplishments and celebrate the little victories. That does not make you arrogant.
Fighting back against the anxiety voices was not (and still is not) something I used to be able to do. I still struggle with it daily, but today I’m pushing past it and am going to write about my vacation.
It was a journey to get here. See my piece about my struggle to leave for vacation below.
M. Drella
The anxiety was actually minimal once I got here. I’m still such a strict rule follower that not messing up someone’s house gives me great anxiety. The rules say don’t smoke on the deck or in the cabin, so I freak out if my husband even lights a cigarette on the last step of said deck.
What if we make the cabin smell like smoke and they think we smoked inside…?
My anxiety chides, but this is anxiety I can still sit with. It’s not the kind that paralyzes me because I know it’s silly. It's my normal.
The constant fear of upsetting someone will always be present, I think, and I’m okay with that. It makes me considerate(or that is how I justify it). Though I wish it wouldn’t eat me up inside, it’s still something I can live with.
This wasn’t a big vacation; it was only an hour and a half away from home. But it is exactly what I needed. Just the woods, my husband and I. I slept on the porch for the majority of both nights and woke up with the sun. It was wonderful and exactly what I needed.
This year, I went through a stage where I couldn’t leave my house for any reason. My anxiety eventually lessened enough for me to go to the barn, but I wouldn’t go to the gas stations; I would panic the whole drive there and the entire drive back. It was frightening, the outside world. And while I’ve always been a homebody, this fear, this tightening in my chest every time I walked outside. That was new.
I’ve been struggling with agoraphobia, the fear of leaving my house, for about ten months now. It comes in phases, but most of the time I can work with it and it’ll let me leave the house as long as I promise not to go into any stores. Over time, I’ve developed “safe” gas stations, but going into any other store sets off panic, which normally ends in panic attacks.
You won’t be able to find what you want! What if someone tries to talk to me? What if I look weird? What if I suddenly decided to Hulk out and punch that glass door?
The voices start to spiral the second I step out of the car.
I started to push myself, but only within a comfort zone, never outside of it. And I always went back to my safe spot, my chair at my house.
But this weekend, I was able to reset. To remind myself that my brain needs the quiet to think. I hadn’t realized how reliant on it I’d become or how frazzled I had gotten living in a bigger city. This was my reset that I needed.
So here is your reminder: go touch some grass, hug a tree, talk to a gnome. Nature is an incredible healing force, and it's free.
(Originally Posted on Medium)
M. Drella