The anxiety state
Monday morning I went in for my chest x-ray. I had been in an anxiety state since the Ikea incident which had shaken me to the core. That was 3 days ago on December 10th. Dates become important when time appears to move painfully slow. Being in an anxiety state means you are in one long sustained panic. At best it can be described as ongoing and uncomfortable. At worst, it is hell and torment. The technician refused to give me the results of my x-ray. I told her I suffered from panic attacks and that I needed to know if I had a collapsed lung, that I couldn't wait 10 days for the results. Please. Didn't she realise it would ruin my Christmas? I was flying to Sweden at the end of the week to spend the holidays with my boyfriend's parents. She said she couldn't tell me, but that she had seen nothing obvious.
These words might have comforted a normal person, but a person in an anxiety state just thinks; she scanned it, but didn't look properly. She's missed something. There's something wrong with me.
The world looks different now. I'm in an anxiety state and can barely make eye contact with the hospital staff or the people coming and going. It's like looking out through sunglasses you can't take off - people smile at you and talk to you but can't really see your expression. They are clueless as to what's going on underneath. For me looking out, everything is shrouded in a kind of darkness, a veil. I want it to look as it always has done.
I go home. I'm safe there. It's the last week of school before the holidays and I have plenty of valid reasons why I can't make any social commitments. Why I can't spend time with my formerly close friend. I need to just get through this week, I need a holiday. I'll be fine after that and this will all go away. I just need to get on that plane.
Disaster strikes again in the form of Christmas drinks with our neighbours. They are very different from us; local people, loud, brash, haven't seen much of the world, 12 years our senior. I don't like their children. They are naughty and classroom trouble makers. I don't invite them around very often. The last time I did my antique guitar that my mother had given me when I was sixteen got damaged. The boy had broken the tuning peg on the machine head and snapped the string. I didn't tell his mother. I kept it to myself to save her humiliation.
During the drinks her husband shows up drunk. We had invited them around for 1 hour. After 2 hours, my boyfriend is impatient. We have to catch a plane tomorrow morning and our neighbours won't leave. The husband is insisting on staying and is slurring his words. He's embarassing us all. I go outside to get something from my car. I come back in and there's a commotion upstairs. The children have been playing in a room which is under refurbishment - one they shouldn't have been in. They had pulled down a mattress onto my boyfriend's prize electric race car set and were jumping on it. As kids do. My boyfriend had picked up the mattress and told the kids to move away. But the naughty boy continues to walk on the track, destroying it further. His mother tells him to get off. But he smiles and stands firm. My boyfriend shouts at him to get off and physically lifts him from the track. The child starts to cry. His mother tells me my boyfriend had lost his temper. My boyfriend apologises to the boy. The family leave.
My boyfriend was angry. The broken race track went in the bin. We had done a nice neighbourly thing by inviting them round for drinks, giving all of them Christmas presents AND a wedding present (they were renewing their vows and wanted us to cancel our holidays to attend the ceremony). In return we had had a disaster. By now I was desperate to start my holiday. I was convinced everything would be fine if I just got away from it all.
These words might have comforted a normal person, but a person in an anxiety state just thinks; she scanned it, but didn't look properly. She's missed something. There's something wrong with me.
The world looks different now. I'm in an anxiety state and can barely make eye contact with the hospital staff or the people coming and going. It's like looking out through sunglasses you can't take off - people smile at you and talk to you but can't really see your expression. They are clueless as to what's going on underneath. For me looking out, everything is shrouded in a kind of darkness, a veil. I want it to look as it always has done.
I go home. I'm safe there. It's the last week of school before the holidays and I have plenty of valid reasons why I can't make any social commitments. Why I can't spend time with my formerly close friend. I need to just get through this week, I need a holiday. I'll be fine after that and this will all go away. I just need to get on that plane.
Disaster strikes again in the form of Christmas drinks with our neighbours. They are very different from us; local people, loud, brash, haven't seen much of the world, 12 years our senior. I don't like their children. They are naughty and classroom trouble makers. I don't invite them around very often. The last time I did my antique guitar that my mother had given me when I was sixteen got damaged. The boy had broken the tuning peg on the machine head and snapped the string. I didn't tell his mother. I kept it to myself to save her humiliation.
During the drinks her husband shows up drunk. We had invited them around for 1 hour. After 2 hours, my boyfriend is impatient. We have to catch a plane tomorrow morning and our neighbours won't leave. The husband is insisting on staying and is slurring his words. He's embarassing us all. I go outside to get something from my car. I come back in and there's a commotion upstairs. The children have been playing in a room which is under refurbishment - one they shouldn't have been in. They had pulled down a mattress onto my boyfriend's prize electric race car set and were jumping on it. As kids do. My boyfriend had picked up the mattress and told the kids to move away. But the naughty boy continues to walk on the track, destroying it further. His mother tells him to get off. But he smiles and stands firm. My boyfriend shouts at him to get off and physically lifts him from the track. The child starts to cry. His mother tells me my boyfriend had lost his temper. My boyfriend apologises to the boy. The family leave.
My boyfriend was angry. The broken race track went in the bin. We had done a nice neighbourly thing by inviting them round for drinks, giving all of them Christmas presents AND a wedding present (they were renewing their vows and wanted us to cancel our holidays to attend the ceremony). In return we had had a disaster. By now I was desperate to start my holiday. I was convinced everything would be fine if I just got away from it all.
posted by Ggirl @ 10:10 pm
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