Walking a Tightrope: Balancing Mental and Physical Health – Part 1

My health feels like I am constantly trying to walk a tight rope in the sky from one podium to another. One foot in front of the other, I try to balance with the big horizontal stick that I hold onto as the sweat makes it start slipping through my hands. I’m falling a bit to my left, I over correct and now I’m falling a bit to my right. I’m so nervous, one false move or too much correction and I’ll be laying on the floor. The stick that I balance is my mental and physical health. They go up and down, making me sway from one way to the other.

One of my medications for Harm OCD and to help as an add on for depression is something that helps me sleep at night more peaceful and without it, I have experienced much greater degrees of feeling hopeless and more harm thoughts against myself. However, it makes me want to snack, snack, snack. Which makes me gain weight, which makes me feel bad about myself. I know without it though (when I have forgotten to fill the prescription) the results were awful.  Due to my ischemic colitis attacks and higher levels of liver enzymes that points to some liver damage, my Doctor wants me to lose 20 pounds (at least).  Due to my severe endometriosis, I have no ovaries at quite a young age and therefore am on add back estrogen as a patch to combat all the side effects.  If I get constipated, do not properly estimate what I need for hydration for the day, if I sit too much or if I get stressed, I am at a greater chance of another ischemic colitis attack. The stressful part is I think the worst part of the equation, I still cannot figure out how to reduce stress when your mental health illness causes you to overanalyze, overachieve, over worry, over organize, and go through thoughts, over and over and over again.

I fell off the tight rope at the beginning of December and I still haven’t picked myself up off the floor.

The question remaining is, what did I do wrong?  Which creates stress and anxiety. Which puts me right back on the floor.

So how about I back up the story to November and see what precedes my loss of balance off the tightrope. Maybe we can piece it back together, however I believe I haven’t been writing lately because I had to stare at some hard truths in order to piece the story back together, and I didn’t want to do that.

I’ve mentioned in previous writing that going on a vacation with a farmer is something that you should only do if you need to constantly remind yourself year after year that the stress that precedes it is worth it. I was convinced before we left for Belize for our 25th anniversary that I never, ever, ever was going to go with Kevin on Vacation in November ever again. However, no other time of year works for him either, so I was just completely done with going with him I guess you could say. The week before we left was the usual shit show, where he tries to put in 90 hours of work into a week and add to that the perfect storm of the weather being perfectly amazing for November, all of these were ingredients for a massive cluster fuck. Myself, I am in perfect condition (sarcasm of all my illnesses) to work, organize the kids/house, organize the vacation, plus run outside if the shit show needs me, get the money, do the bills, etc. etc. You have heard this whine before.

I get stressed out before we go on vacation. The anxiety in my brain, although it doesn’t name itself and causes me to jump out the window, it sits silent, like it’s giving me the silent treatment before once again causing the cortisol of stress to rush throughout my arteries, veins, and flow out my orifices. I don’t really know – it’s there until after when I deal with its consequences, physical and mental.

Kevin worked outside to 2am and we needed to leave at 2am, so guess who gets to drive to Regina in the middle of the night when she doesn’t want to because she would have rather gone earlier and got a hotel like the other twenty two times she has requested an easier start to a vacation but never receives it.  We got to the airport and honestly, I’m ready to let it all go, we made it, things will only get better from here. I’m sure the universe must know I need a break already. Or do I just egg it on to challenge me to show me who is the boss of the universe?

We are standing in line with our suitcases, and I am feeling quite satisfied that all has fallen into place. In fact, for 4am, I am quite happy and chipper.  I get our documents together, complete our check-in, so far, the flight has said it is on time. Until it wasn’t. I could tell there was a kerfuffle happening ahead of us in line as people’s phones started going off and you could hear sighs of “oh no” and “what now.”  I asked ahead of what is happening, and I was told that our flight had just been cancelled to Calgary and now we, along with everyone in the line connecting from Calgary to go anywhere in the world, are now going to miss their connections.

I wanted to scream at someone, but I know that never helps as I remember when the exact same thing happened to us on our honeymoon and instead, I cried and cried and eventually they got us on another airline so we could still make it, and we did! So, I figured this time we must be in a similar situation and maybe if I just cry, good things will happen again. Apparently, the Universe only works that way once as this time we were not going anywhere fast. My first message. om WestJet said that instead of leaving this morning at 6am, we would leave tomorrow at noon, fly to phoenix, the next day we would fly to Chicago, then to Houston and then to Belize (3 days later of our 6-day trip). I am never a person to throw in the towel though, I try to think of every last alternative before I admit defeat.  I walk to the Air Canada counter, nope they are full even to go to Toronto instead. The lineup is pretty much at a standstill while the first people try to get their information sorted out. My second thought was that while I am standing here anyways, I’m going to go on hold with WestJet and see if I can make any progress that way. It paid off as I talked to a nice lady who was trying all different directions and airlines to get us to Belize. She had narrowed the best down to leaving in an hour for Puerto Vallarta Mexico and then to Houston and an overnight and then to Belize by the next day and she would even add on an extra day to our travel to make it up to us. Somehow WestJet could make me believe that I was getting a super awesome amazing deal when really, I was not getting to Belize that day in the way I had planned to be an easy route to Calgary that I had booked for that exact reason, months ago.

The rest of the day in between the flying, I was cancelling this hotel, booking that hotel, cancelling the small flight to the little island in Belize, booking another flight, etc. etc. However, I have to say I was maintaining my cool and Kevin was pretty good at keeping quiet while I made all the arrangements. Regardless of how you slice it up though, making all those changes and all those phone calls was causing stress.

To be continued……