…worth it

I love our challenges at our new store.  This month for the journaling challenge we were challenged to write about something that was hard in our lives.  We tend to only “Blog/Scrap” about the fun times.  I’ve been wanting and needing to write about this hard time in my life so that my children and others who may need to read about it can know that we all have hard times.As long as I can remember I’ve suffered with anxiety. Although I didn’t know there was a name for it back then. I remember when I was little that my heart would beat so fast that I didn’t know what was wrong and then I couldn’t breathe. My parents took me to the emergency room several times with the Dr. sending us home telling them that everything was fine. I never felt very fine when that was happening to me. I never liked it when my parent would go away on dates because I was always nervous. One time we were over at some friends of ours while Mom and Dad were on a date and us kids decided to watch poltergeist I had watched it before with no problems but this time I couldn’t relax. I left the room to try and calm my heart and breathing down but I couldn’t so I went and asked my brother, Greg, if he would come sit with me, he did. He wasn’t mad or anything, he just came upstairs and we visited until I was able to relax. I was in my teenage years one time and my parents were going to go on an overnight date, I was so nervous about them leaving me that I begged them to take me with them. I told them that they wouldn’t even know that I was there and that I would sleep in the tub if they would just take me. They ended up not going. I hated that I had made them miss out on their time together because of me. I had a hard time being able to sleep at night. My Dad was really good at helping me relax. There were many times that I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I would go wake him up and we would go out into his wood shop and we would talk about all sorts of stuff. Dad would work on a wood project that he was making and we would just visit until I was relaxed enough to go back to bed. We would kneel by my bed and say a prayer together and off to bed again we’d go. Dad also sometimes worked shift work and I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I would call him in the middle of the night to talk. I prayed a lot! Not just my morning and night time prayers, but all day long sometimes. Praying that I would just be able to make it though my classes that day at school. Then I told my parents that I was going to go to college. I don’t think that they ever thought that I would be able to leave home. But through one of my Heavenly Father’s “tender mercies” I was able to go to college without any problems at all. I was able to get married to my sweetheart. I then lost the twins and had a little bout of anxiety but then was able to go on with life. I went through my tubal pregnancy amazingly fine also. After Derick was born and life-flighted, my OBGYN wrote me a prescription for a depression/anxiety pill because he didn’t want me to have post partum problems. I kept the prescription in my purse but never filled it because I was afraid of how it would make me feel. I thought that it would make me a different person with no feelings. I thought that I would feel one way in my head and act a different way on the outside. There goes my anxiety talking again. I did pretty good and then one day soon after, it hit me again. It was horrible. I didn’t like being home alone. I would be nervous fighting panic attacks all day long until Kirk would come home from school and work. We lived in a little house behind the best landlords of all time. I knew that if I got too nervous during the day that I could go visit Bonnie. The bad thing was that I was always afraid that what if I needed to get away and couldn’t handle the fear anymore and that if I were to call someone that they wouldn’t be home. Then what would I do. So I never called anyone because if I didn’t know whether or not they were home it was better. Then I got to the point that I couldn’t be by myself any more. So Kirk would take us around the corner every morning to his Mom’s who didn’t know there was a problem. She just thought that I was coming there to visit for the day. One day she asked me if I could do a favor for her and go and pick up my Father in Law at the airport. I had to tell her no. There was no way that I could get in the car and go anywhere. I couldn’t even get in the car and drive around the corner to her house let alone go somewhere where I might have a panic attack and not be able to do anything. I couldn’t imagine being stuck at a stoplight. After that happened, I finally broke down and told her what was going on. She was wonderful about it. She would take me with her while she taught a class at the institute and I would sit out in the hall with Derick until she was done. Pretty Pathetic I thought. I couldn’t handle staying for a full Sunday of church. We always blamed it on Derick that he needed to go. There were many a time that Kirk and I would “Try” to go grocery shopping and I would have to leave in the middle of shopping. Kirk was wonderful!!! He never made me feel bad. He would try to talk me through things. There were times, in my head, that I thought for sure that he would take Derick away and put me in a crazy house because sometime I really did think that I would go crazy. He never gave up on me through it all. Truly an amazing man. I then got to the point that I couldn’t sleep at night. I didn’t like waking up Kirk because I knew that he needed his sleep and have to go to work. So I would go get Derick out of bed. He was probably 1-2 years old, and I would put in a Disney movie and have him lay by me on the living room floor until I was able to relax enough to fall asleep. I didn’t like being alone and he would give me something to think about or look at. We found a councilor through the Church to see if that would help but I would end up coming home from there worse off because I was always trying to figure out what he wanted me to say. I didn’t do that for very long. I was getting worse. I got to the point that I was lucky if I would sleep 1 hour through the night. I wasn’t wanting to eat anything, I knew that I had to do something. I would read my scriptures, say my prayers, everything that I could think of to be closer to my Heavenly Father so that He would take the fear away from me. One night I was awake not sleeping again flipping through the channels when I stopped on one called “Attacking Anxiety” there were people on there talking about feeling the same way I was feeling. I was amazed that I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. I went in and woke up Kirk and made him come out and watch it with me. There were a set of tapes you could order and Kirk told me to order them so at 3:30 am I picked up the phone and ordered them. While I was waiting for them to come, I called a Friend of mine’s Dad. He was a councilor. We talked about everything and He told me again about taking a prescription and I was able to talk to him about my fears of why I hadn’t taken it before. He calmed my fears and I knew that nothing could be worse than what I was feeling at the time. So I went and filled my prescription. I started taking them the same day that I received my tapes in the mail. I’ve never looked back since. Just knowing that there was a name for what I had and that there were ways that I could learn to cope with it was a miracle to me. I know that my Heavenly Father had me go through this for a reason. I have been able to help other that have suffered from anxiety also. I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. If I could help just one person deal with it like I did, it was all worth it.