Wrestling with the demon

Being a control freak,  I am obsessive about failure. How have I failed? How am I going to fail? What may make me fail? This is a big side effect of struggling with an anxiety disorder. In the past few years, I have improved at my failure freakouts. I have learned to calm down and let go, and not attach life or death stakes to each and every decision. The past few weeks I have backslid in my progress. A combination of hormones, extreme emotions, and an unusual situation have led me to question a lot.

I have been angry about the Ashley situation and felt as if God was toying with me.  It took me years to get to a place where I was peacful about not being able to have a baby and felt right about adoption. It felt as if just when I reached that point, I got pregnant. I am in no way unhappy about being pregnant, but I have struggled with the timing, and the consequences. I have spent the past week wrestling with a sense of anger, fear of failure, and anxiety over making all the wrong choices.

Today I came to place where I could let Ashley go. I just sort of laid it all out there. My anger, and fear and sense of betrayal. How I worried about her and hope beyond hope that her time with us was for the positive and not the negative. Next I laid out my fears about pregnancy and motherhood and messing up. Finally, I came home and discussed all of this with my husband.

He reminded me that we are going to be ok and that I have a tendency to freak out about things we are ok with. Since the moment I found out I was pregnant, I have been overwhelmed with worry about how we would find a place to live, where we should live, how I didn't want to move while pregnant, how no place would be as cozy as my condo. How I want one more summer to put the baby in the stroller and walk downtown, but I felt like the "grownup" thing to do was to run out and find a new place to live.  After a long chat with Justin, we have decided to stay in our condo and I am so happy about it. I love it here and I just wasn't ready to take on moving on top of everything else.

Justin also reminded  me that I had told him I would leave the decision to move up to him. I came to this decision, because I can let anxiety build up until I push both of us to do things that maybe aren't the most prudent financial moves. Living here longer is better for us financially and we both like it, so why am I freaking out?

I think when Ashley left, I was desperate to make a new start. To cleanse all of the emotion and stress away by moving out of it. (somewhere my sisters are shaking their heads) Creating more stress, doesn't help cleanse old stress. Since some quality prayer time, a long chat with Justin, and deciding to stay home. I just feel better.

Now I can focus on the holidays!