Packing Cleaning Panicking Packing

The panic attacks are now down to one a day. Whoo hoo! Progress, people, progress. If you have ever had one, you know that is still one too many. I’m exhausted most of the time these days. Let me tell y’all, anxiety is fricking tiring. I have a panic attack and then I feel like I could sleep for a week.

This weekend was spent packing and cleaning. Friday night, Jason and I did go out on our “date night” to see The Departed. Um, great flick. We both walked out saying that this is Scorsese’s Oscar. So good. With Matt Damon, Marky Mark(I can’t help it, I still call him that), and Leo DiCaprio in the cast, well, it was nice to look at.

On Sunday morning, I got to hang out with my friend Mike that I don’t see very often anymore. I miss him. It was nice to sit there with Mike and Jason and just goof around. They both make me so happy. We ate out and I didn’t have a full blown attack! Progress at every turn. I’m a little less crazy everyday (well, sort of).

Since my allergic reaction I have been getting up at 5:30am everyday to make a little eggs and toast to take my steroids. It sounds strange but I believe that I just happened to wake at that time when I first started taking them. Anyway, I have been taking that time every morning to kind of meditate and pray. I lost aspects of my religion when I left my comfy suburb of Philadelphia and I couldn’t quite reconcile what I had been taught and what my experiences were. So, instead of trying to reconcile it (cause that takes thought and effort) and form a solid belief system, I just kind of turned away from God entirely.

My Christianity is not something I discuss on here often, largely because I don’t agree with the fanatic Christians that seem to take center stage in the media these days. I feel like being a Christian has become a dirty word or that being a Christian makes me naive and stupid. In reality, I have thought long and hard in the last few weeks about the religion that I was more or less born into. As with any religion people can mold it into anything they want it to mean.

I can’t buy that homosexuals are going to hell. Sorry. I can’t buy that my Jewish future husband won’t be joining me in heaven either. Not so much. I don’t see God the way some Christians do I guess. I see him as loving more than punishing, I guess.

So every morning since the reaction I have been getting up and praying as the sun rises. It’s nice. I feel like since I am having these panic attacks about dying that maybe part can be alleviated by getting a sense of what I really believe will happen when I die. I long for that belief I held as a child of the eternal afterlife party in the sky. Maybe I do still believe that a little, maybe I don’t. I feel like once I get a clearer sense of it my fear won’t be able to overtake me anymore. Of course I won’t know until I really do die the truth of it all but at least I can have some faith that no matter what happens, I will be ok.

DO NOT DO IT! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WOMAN!

To the chick who googled “letters to ex-boyfriends to get them back?”.  Do not do it.  Seriously.   Unless you want to look like a psycho, then go ahead, you big psycho.

Why Won’t WordPress Center My Titles?

I had nothing planned for this post. I just wanted to write because it keeps me from googling “celexa side effects” or consulting WebMD for some potentially devistating side effect that will leave me a one armed three eyed purple people eater.

I applied for health insurance over a month ago and they have yet to respond. They say they will have thier desicion by Friday. Thank god. Of course they will probably turn me down because, after all, I had a herniated disk last year and have panic attacks so therefore I am broken and will cost them mere thousands. I hate health insurance. We need reform. Do you know someone just turned down my mom? The woman who had breast cancer last year? Nice. Meanwhile, Kim Jong is going to make nuclear pancakes of us all. Whatever, Bush, reform freaking healthcare, you fruit loop. NOW. Or I am throwing Karl in there.
I should go and look up “fast heartbeat” my ex boyfriends or “heart attack symptoms” “allergy to Karl“.
I don’t feel like spell checking this. I have to ask “WHY ON GOD’S EARTH DOESN’T WORDPRESS HAVE A SPELL CHECKER?”. Seriously, people, WTF?

Where Oh Where Has My Sanity Gone?

Where oh where can it beeeeeeee????

I’m better today. Worlds better. I am not sure why as nothing has really changed. I did finally get a call in to the psychodoc and get a prescription for Celexa. Going to pick it up soon. I will be a less crazy panicky anxious version of myself in the very near future.

I can not believe how tough these last two weeks have been.  3 panic attacks a day.  At least.  Out. of. control. people. seriously.

Tomorrow I go back in to see my therapist.  I am so grateful that she was able to see me.  She’s fabulous too.

I made our first reservation on our cross country trip today.  We are going to be staying at Mandalay Bay in Vegas for our first two nights on the road.  I can’t wait to blog from the road trip.  I hope I’ll be able to upload pictures!  Making that reservation definitely picked up my spirits.  I have been so focused on the cost of our move and, you know, dying suddenly that I forgot that part of this is going to be fun!  FUN!  I need to keep that in mind more and try to just do what I can about the finances.  Hopefully the money will be there like it’s supposed to.

I’m, in a very weird way, glad that this finally happened to me.  I mean, I have been having panic attacks about being allergic to something for so long.  It happened.  I’m ok.  And hell, even if I am not, I always have my friend, the EPIPEN!

Goodnight, folks.  Thank you all for your support and kind words.  You give me strength just when I think there isn’t any left.  I know that I am not alone (and neither are you, my pretties).  Hugs to you all!

I Can’t Breathe or at least I believe I can’t most of the time

This last week has been BRUTAL.  I have been trying to get “back to normal” but it’s been a struggle.  I went back to work Monday.  Work went a little something like this:

11am: Stumble into office an hour late due to waking at 5:30am to take steroids and falling back to sleep somewhere around 7.  Then not being able to drag my ass out of bed until 9:30am.

11:30am: Call in co worker to “talk to me” because I just ate some hot cereal that I may or may not be deathly allergic to.  Please note Epi Pen was in hand whole time.

12pm: Stupid computer isn’t downloading correctly and IT people are busy busy busy, so while on hold I research how many things I could be allergic to and how many people die from anaphylactic shock.

1pm: Stupid computer thingy STILL isn’t downloading correctly so I start to think about what the hell is safe to eat for lunch.

1:15pm: Can’t do shit because computer has rendered my job useless which is lovely because now I have more time to OBSESS over what I am going to eat for lunch.  Yay.

2pm: Order out Thai Chicken Yellow Curry.  Of course, perfectly logical considering Thai dishes are famous for nut dishes.

2:01pm: Proceed to have 2^nd panic attack of the day.  Luckily someone in the office has had them before and I was able to calm down.

My computer finally started to be able to download those damn TPS reports or whatever so I could concentrate on work until I had to go home.

I would take any amount of pain in the world to get rid of these things.  I can’t imagine how some people around me have dealt with them their whole lives.  I thank god mine didn’t start until I was 28.

It’s not really a comfort though….when they are consuming me.

You Should Have Seen the Other Guy…I Mean, Walnut

From 10/03/06:
The last 16 hours have been F-U-N. It all started last night. We had our Yom Kippor feast of Matzoball soup, Roast Beef sandwiches and a brownie for dessert. The brownie had walnuts on it and well, I have had a hatred for walnuts my whole life. I decided to put aside our differences and dig in because it looked so damn tasty. An hour later I was lying on my couch playing with the pup when I realized I was REALLY itchy. EVERYWHERE. So I looked at myself in the mirror. Hives. Ahh, no biggie there weren’t alot of them so I popped two benadryl and proceeded to then have a panic attack. You know because sometimes when people are allergic to things, their throat closes up. I was sure I was going to be one of those people. Luckily, I wasn’t and went to bed.

This morning I woke up and sincerely in all honesty looked EXACTLY like this:

Yep pretty much sloth.

Jason and I rushed to my docs and she shot me full of steriods.
My lovely doc also gave me these parting gifts. More steriods(I will be lifting cars off of small children in no time!):

AND the greatest gift of all for someone who freaks out about her throat closing up on a semi regular basis. The EPIPEN!!! Yippee. I now have to carry this wherever I go. Epipen, my friend…

***This post took me FOREVER to publish because I couldn’t figure out how to load pictures onto Wordpress and panic my ass off at the same time.***

Talk is Cheap

My friend wrote a comment today on a previous post that made me think about the fact that I write much better than I talk. For instance, if you would have asked me how I was doing the day I wrote that post, I probably would have told you that I am “good”. I probably would have told you about my plans for my move or the Jamaica vacation or the cross country trip. If you emailed me that day, you would have gotten a response very close to the post I wrote. For me, writing has always been the best way to express my feelings. The deepest ones. If I tried to say what I say on this blog in a conversation I probably would be nervously laughing and trying to gauge how you are feeling about me the whole time. In the end, I wouldn’t say half the things I say on here or in email or on birthday cards. I think when I speak; I am way too busy trying to assess how the other person is receiving the info than what I am truly trying to get across.

In junior high, I started a journal. I found my outlet for everything I held in. Back then, we still wrote letters and mailed them instead of sending emails across the ether. When I was angry at people, my mother would tell me to write all my feelings down in a letter to them and then put it in a drawer somewhere. Whatever I did, I was NOT to mail the letter. Unfortunately, I never did get the hang of that. I ALWAYS mailed them or gave them to the people. Sometimes that was a moronic thing to do and I would learn a lesson but sometimes it actually helped. I could never keep how I felt about people around me to myself. Thankfully, most of the time I was writing how much I loved them not how much I wished they hadn’t kissed my crush behind the cafeteria at lunch.

There have been moments on this blog where I wanted to praise people in my world. I haven’t because I don’t want to name them on here. It’s enough that I am exposing Jason to the world without his participation. It’s a whole different ball of wax to start writing about friends and family who get more than a little freaked out even thinking of any of their business being broadcast for anyone who googles “deb deborah cheat on my husband”. This is why my exboyfriends all have goofy names (I know one would KILL me if he knew I had a blog and was talking about him at all). I have even given a few of my friends pseudonyms to protect their identity. There are moments though that they strike a cord with me so much that I want to tell the world how awesome they are. How thankful I am for them. How selfless they can be. How without them I wouldn’t be who I am. How sometimes I just wish they lived down the street so I could tell them this funny thing that happened to me that day or cry to them about how I am so confused all the time.
Then there are the people I have lost touch with. The ones that let me go or I let go because at the time, I thought it was the right thing to do. There wasn’t any animosity or anger; it was just “time” for us to part ways. There are a few who I think about today and know I shouldn’t have let them go so easily. I should have called and called until they picked up the phone. I should have told them how much they meant to me when they finally picked it up. I know that some would have gone away no matter how hard I tried to keep them near but it doesn’t make me miss them any less. There are moments when I am feeling alone and I know one of them would have known exactly how I was feeling. They would have been able to relate better than anyone else, after all, they were my friend for a reason. We related.

My family is even more difficult for me to talk about on here. One reason is that my mom could be reading it. Even before I told my mom about it though, I have never delved back into my family’s past (except maybe for a mention of something here or there) or my childhood. It wasn’t exceptionally good or bad. As with everyone there is one glaring thing that every therapist latches onto for dear life as soon as they hear it because it’s so obviously traumatizing. I don’t want to get into that on here though because it just doesn’t seem relevant for me at 31 years old. Did I learn some bad habits from it? Do I struggle with coping mechanisms that are terribly outdated and overused? Sure but they are my problems. Not my parents or family. They did the best they could and they love me. They always have, I have always felt their love and that is something not everyone can say. So I try not to expose their lives too much on here.  Plus, we have the same last name; I can not hide them with goofy nicknames.

As time goes on, hopefully I will find a way to praise the people on here in a way that they are comfortable with.  I hope I can do them justice when I finally do.  For now, I guess I’ll just go back to saying “thank you” to them in birthday cards and email.

Stressed Out

This morning I had a panic attack. I say had but I really should say having as I am still fighting it off. It’s better but I still feel weakness in my arm and I can feel the adreniline is still coursing through my veins. My mind is racing as is my heart. Ahh, panic attacks.

I took off from work today because I thought Jason had off from work and since we haven’t spent a whole day together in God knows how long, it would be nice to do so. Unfortunately, Jason did not have off today so now I am home alone watching some random Martin Sheen movie from the 80s. In it, a young woman had a heart attack and I have some arm weakness from exercising so it set off one of the worst panic attacks I ahve had in a couple of years. I have been doing pretty well with them but I guess the stress of moving, getting married and trying to change my career has finally caught up with me. Those are a lot of life stressors at once. Just when I thought I had a handle on panic, it comes back to bite me in the ass.

Karl Is Insane

But it’s his birthday so please go on over and take a gander at his site today. He did “Birthday Dares” all week long.  He even went sky diving…no amount of daring could make my ass go sky diving, he’s a brave soul.  Crazy, but brave.

I Am Already Confusing My Future Children (and it’s not because of all the drugs)

I was reading random blogs today and stumbled onto a blog called JewishyIrishy. I then saw a book that the blogger edited entitled “Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from the Almost, Not Quite and In Between”. It’s a compilation of stories written by those with the experience of being half Jewish and half Christian. I knew that by marrying a Jew, my children would indeed have that unique question in their heads about which religion to ultimately follow. When I saw this book, I felt I needed to buy it. After all, I will be producing children with this particular issue. It never occurred to me that they would feel “half” of something. What the summary provided was a glimpse into a struggle to feel a part of the Jewish faith and not just a half of it.

Look, I am not naive, I have been questioning my consistent choice to date Jewish men my whole adult life. When I would spot someone from across the room that I was attracted to, at some point or another one of my friends would say “I just found out he’s Jewish, how do you do that?”. The fact is, I was never consciously looking for someone Jewish. I mean, why would I? I was raised on Christian music, I went to Sunday school, church camp, and read my bible every night. Why the hell would I go and seek out someone who didn’t share my beliefs and faith? In college I distinctly remember being frustrated that I was constantly finding myself attracted to Jewish men. My college didn’t have very many Jewish male students yet I probably dated half of them.

Don’t get me wrong I have a lot of respect and admiration for the Jewish religion. I have never been a Christian that understood how anyone who wasn’t Christian was going to hell or went along proclaiming everyone needed to be converted for their own good. Just the opposite, frankly. We both believe in the same God, right? We just think Jesus was more than a really good guy.
By the time my parents sat me down for a heart to heart about what it meant to actually marry someone Jewish, I had read up a little on the subject of interfaith marriages. I had spectacular answers when they asked me questions until the subject of children was raised. Deep down my hope was that my husband would just let our children be raised Christian. I kept that to myself though as to not alarm the guy I was dating who looked at our Christmas tree and said “There will never be one of those in my house”. Fast forward 10 years to this guy marrying a Christian girl. So much for no Christmas trees in his house. Maybe he just calls them Hanukkah bushes.

Honestly I should have realized then that Jews wouldn’t just “give up” their religion any more than I would. As a compromise Jason and I have agreed we will incorporate both into our children’s lives. It looks like they are likely to be more affected by our choice then I had imagined. It will be confusing for all of us for awhile I guess but we will muddle through and do the best we can. Maybe I’ll even have to keep this book so I can pass it on when the time is right. Just so they will know that yes, they are half Jewish and half Christian but they aren’t and never will be alone.