My head hurts, my body aches, shaking from my second panic attack of the day. My fever has spiked and all I want to do is lay in bed and cry. Fears over everyday survival are triggering my panic attacks. Once the adrenaline wears off, I have until the pernicious thoughts about how I can’t go on like this much longer before another panic attack hits.
Anyone who tells you positive thinking can cure anxiety is lying. Certainly, positive thinking can help on the days when my anxiety is triggered by something tangible, but today my anxiety is being triggered by my fever. You see, its actually a rather vicious cycle. The first panic attack hit right as I was waking up. It wasn’t really triggered by anything I did, I don’t even think I heard a noise, but there I was, barely awake, curled up in a ball, shaking like a leaf. This caused my fever to spike. The fever spike caused the headache. All of which means that I’m very much on edge.
I made through a little bit of work today, though I’m amazed I did since somehow the closed captioning I’d been working on for several weeks was eaten by my computer. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to get them back, so I started over. Hoping that the second time around things would play nice. It was really ok, until I started panicking again.
This one was worse than the first one because somewhere along the line this morning, my fibromyalgia started to flare, most likely during the first panic attack. As soon as the panic attack was over, I started thinking about the same thing that has been troubling me for a few weeks, and that is that I cannot keep doing this like this. I’ve had a fever for 2 years. I’ve had chronic migraines for the past 8 years. Something has to change.
So, I decided to take some small actions. I drug myself back out of bed. I stripped off all the bedding and put it in the washer. Then I cut up some vegetables and put them in the crockpot with some lentils and coconut milk so that I will have something nutritious to eat for the next few days. I let my boyfriend know my concerns, which in turn made them easier to cope with, even though they are huge issues that we have no idea where to start to solve them. I forced myself to do these things, even though I didn’t want to because I knew that I needed to. I forced myself to write them down here because I have found that putting these things out there helps.
I’ve little hope for a miracle at this point. Every night when I go to sleep, I hope that something I did the previous day would help my fever, which in turn would help my anxiety. Some days, I don’t wake up with a fever. Some days it comes later in the day. Some days, I don’t have panic attacks. Some days I don’t have migraines. I am grateful for the relief on those days.
When I go to bed tonight, I’ll be grateful for the little things I’ve done for myself today. I will be grateful for clean sheets, and if I’m lucky that my headache went away with a late afternoon shower. None of this will guarantee me a better tomorrow, but it will guarantee me a better present. I think about my future and I try my best to give future me good things, but the more I live in the present, the easier it is to be grateful and not scared that things could get worse. Things never stay the same, so really things could get worse, but they could also get a lot better. My hope is that with little gifts for me tomorrow, I can change the odds into my favor.
