Resume Breathing

My husband is at work right now.  His first day on the job.  I am not alone in my house, but oddly, the house feels like my home again.

I'm kind of numb. After 518 days of unemployment (truly, I didn't count until it was over), it's hard to know how to feel. My body and mind have experienced all the signs of chronic stress and burnout. While I want very much to believe things will begin to better now, it's hard to trust that maybe everything will start to feel okay.

But today, right at this moment, life has a sense of hope. The house is quiet, his laptop is closed, the TV is quiet, and the cat is purring on my husband's chair. I think I've taken my first real breath in nearly a year and a half. Healing will be a process, but now it can begin.

518 Days

It is always when a difficult situation begins to be over that I wish I had chronicled the entire saga.  How better to communicate the gradual distress of dealing with something hard on a regular basis?  Saying now, “a cloud settled over our family for a long time” doesn’t quite capture the way the cloud creeped in and took up residence, or the way we could barely recognize that there was a cloud, or the moments when we would see a glimmer of light, or the anguish when those glimmers would be extinguished and we would be still left in darkness.

After the fact, it is impossible to go back and capture the immediacy of the experience and re-chronicle the journey.  Life must be written as it is lived, or the writing does not truly reflect life.

My husband lost his job on April 27, 2009.  It was our 18^th anniversary.  This job loss was the 3^rd such loss in 25 months.  All three losses were due to an economic downturn in his industry.  The previous two times, he had a job within just a couple weeks.  When this journey began, we had no idea that it truly would be a journey rather than another blip.  Other than short-term and part-time census work in late spring, he has stayed unemployed since then.  I have been immersed in a morass of  emotions, woes, crises, and unrealness; perhaps I will figure out how to write about them at some point.  I couldn’t even write about them privately at the time because the expression of the words made the situation more real than my soul could bear.

So here I am, trying to figure out how to get out of the cloud.  Yesterday, my husband was offered a job.  The pay will be pretty much the same as he’s been getting for unemployment, so our short-term financial future has no improvement.  Hopefully, we will soon be able to look at options like refinancing the mortgage that can make a financial difference in other ways.  So, yes, this is a good thing—but it isn’t awesome.  I’m not feeling the euphoria I’d thought I would feel.  I’m the recipient of good wishes and congratulatory hugs, yet I feel kind of numb.

Yesterday, it was 17 months—to the day—since my husband had lost his job.  It was 518 days.  (No, I hadn’t been counting; it was only after it was over that I could bear to do so.)  I don’t think it’s possible for someone to snap out of a 518-day experience immediately.  I’m deeply grateful for my friends who are rejoicing for me.  At some point, I will be able to rejoice with them.  But for now, I’m still in the cloud—just a little closer to the lighter edge than I was on Day 517.

healing is a process

Hmm.  Reading my last blog post is kind of depressing, although it's nice, too, since I'm no longer feeling like I'm in such a funk.

I've continued to learn a lot about chronic stress and some of the symptoms I've been experiencing.  Yesterday, I realized that one thing that's different about me now (as opposed to, say, two years ago), is my startle reflex.  yes, the same startle reflex that babies get that we laughed at in our children.  (Oops, does that make us bad parents?)

I've startled easily for years, but my family has pointed out recently that I'm much more sensitive than I used to be.  When I hear the phone ring, my heart starts to beat fast and I feel panicky.  If something unexpected happens, I feel anxious, like something bad is about to happen.  I'm still looking for the right doctor to help me through all this, but my friend who was diagnosed with PTSD after a difficult medical diagnosis and surgery has pointed out that I have many of the symptoms of people with PTSD.

Here's what I'm finding really interesting, though, in all my reading about chronic stress and PTSD: the lists of thinks to do to help coping.

Here's a list I found at http://www.helpmewithanxiety.com/. 

Practicing some form of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) on a daily basis

Aerobic exercise for 20-30 minutes daily

Learning how to budget time and plan ahead

Cut down on caffeine intake (preferably altogether)

Talking with someone – anyone- on a regular basis about one’s worries and concerns.

Meditation/Yoga

Listening to calming music

Directly addressing the thoughts ‘cognitions’ that are driving your anxiety engine

Directly confronting the behaviors one wants to avoid

Practicing and mastering how to respond to feared situations

This list amazes me.  Most of these items (yes, even the one about exercise-blech) are things I've yearned for during the past year.  I've had some innate sense that I need to cut back on caffeine, that I missed the progressive relaxation exercises I learned in my college Neuromuscular Relaxation class years ago.  I have missed music for years.

Even the last three items, which the website indicates should be done in conjunction with a psychiatrist, are things I've become more conscious of.  In my mind, I've begun rehearsing how I could handle various scenarios that pop into my mind.  I've thought a great deal about the behaviors I want to avoid, and I've made myself actually do some of the ones that have caused me trouble in the past.

Although my mind is struggling mightily right now, my body has seemed to just know the right things to do.  Or maybe it's my subconscious.  I realize, as I look at this list, that I have already started to do some of these things, without actively knowing that I needed to.
Still, yesterday was a difficult day.  I taught four classes--two of them longer classes that were meeting for the first time, both  meeting in the afternoon (not my good time of day).  In between my morning classes and those two classes, I spent three hours working on Fall Fest on campus.  By the time I got home, I felt completely drained.  I had no energy, and I was back to being very emotionally fragile.  I cried easily, I wrapped myself up in a blanket and lay on the couch, and finding the energy to even brush my teeth at bedtime was a chore.  (In fact, I really wanted to go to bed at 5:30.)

At the same time, though, there was a healing element to yesterday.  I was able to recognize that I was exhausted and that the exhaustion I was experiencing was temporary.  I was able to say, "I've had a long day, and now I'm tired.  My body just needs to replenish its stores.  Don't expect too much of yourself.  You're going to continue to have a few challenging days, even as you generally tend to feel better."

My awareness that this was a symptom of chronic stress did make it a bit easier for me to cope with it all.  Even a month ago, the same experience would have had me in tears, for several hours, wondering what was wrong with me and whether I would ever be okay.

Today I didn't have class until 1.  I woke up (too early, but that's a story for another time), and I was able to relax with the computer for a bit and then remembered to take lots of deep breaths.  By the time I got home, I was still tired, but I had the mental energy to focus on some things I'd been neglecting for a while, and I realized I was feeling a bit more like "me" today.

It's hard to give myself permission to feel bad and to know that I have a long way to go before I feel healed again.  We had too many things hit us at once a year and a half ago, and each of those things created long-lasting repercussions that are still difficult to live with.  I shouldn't be surprised that my body has reacted to the mental stress of trying to be positive, hold a family together, keep my job, deal with hormonal changes, and worry about every phone call and every piece of mail, wondering what new crisis we will have to deal with.

This is what my life is right now.  The trick is to remember to breathe and hope that one day, one night, I can dream again.