debbie downer | party of one | and a clarification

thankful for that sweet face, my husband's scruffy
face, my family, and for my fabulous friends.
your support means so, so very much.

so, maybe i was a little too vague earlier.

after numerous texts, e-mails, and calls from family and friends, i realized that i may have seriously worried a few people and that vague should just be thrown straight out the window. i do sincerely apologize to anyone who has worried or thought that i was having a life or death emergency. i'm not having a life or death emergency and i'm okay. i'm just dealing with a personal struggle that needs re-assessing and a new plan of attack. however, when you have a family, nothing affects just you. it's not only personal, it affects all of the people in your home who depend on you on a daily basis. this reason alone is why i'm being so proactive. i can't let my family down. i can't let myself down. and i deserve better.

so, i feel the need to clarify a little bit about what's going on: i suffer from moderate to severe general anxiety disorder, which is tied in with the postpartum depression. i have never experienced any anxiety prior to marlo's birth, so this is still very new to me, even a year in. the anxiety began to become a bigger problem when we moved to nyc and our lives changed tremendously in such a short amount of time. i've been dealing with it and coping the healthiest ways that i know; i go to therapy regularly, i take my doctors advice seriously, i do a lot of research on my own, i'm taking different medications that are supposed to help my condition, and i have one or two glasses of wine when i feel that it's necessary.

but after months on this particular path, my anxiety is doing nothing but getting worse and i'm starting to manifest my symptoms physically. i simply don't feel well and it's beginning to be hard to function healthfully on a daily basis. i'm a big ball of tension and i literally ache from it. i wake up five or six times a night, just begging my mind to slow down, begging my body to please, please relax. even my dreams are too fast paced.

this past week was the proof that something is not clicking/working. i don't want to be this person, this mom, this wife, or this friend. i just can't do it the way that i'm doing it anymore.

which is why something has to change. i'm just not quite sure yet what that change will entail. but i'm ready for it and want so very badly to get back to being myself and the mama, wife, and friend that i used to be.

i've always said that i'm a work in progress; it's just that this particular progress may take a little more work.




(also, if anyone out there has dealt with similar situations and has any information that they'd like to share or pass along to me, i'd really love to hear it. you can leave it in the comments or find my email in the contact tab at the top and email me directly. thank you so much for the support, everyone. it truly means so very much to me.)