Much Ado About Nothing In Particular...
Jan. 8th, 2008 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladymirthThe expected panic attack failed to manifest yesterday, probably because I was too busy sleeping almost the whole day. Instead, it decided to come upon me first thing this morning. I woke up at 4.30 feeling sick, and then quietly proceeded to bounce off the walls, with much hand-wringing and screaming into pillows. Finally, at around six o'clock, I went to my parents room clutching my Huggy pillow. Dad was already up and trying to convince the Li'l Bro that he had to go to school today, so his side of the bed was empty. I just burrowed under the pillows next to my Mum and started to cry. She didn't quite get what I was on about in her sleep-addled haze, but once in a miracle she did just what I needed her to do. She held me to her, stroked my hair and let me cry myself out. Then she made me a mug of hot Milo. I wondered how I ever could have doubted that she loves me.
When she's eighty-five and senile and driving me up the wall, this is how I want to remember her. A sleepy warmth, soft arms around me, the smell of hot chocolate and a feeling of safety. I can forgive her a good deal for that.
Anyway, as anxiety attacks go, this one was baby cakes. Plus, I felt better afterward, as I always do. I went downstairs with my mug of hot Milo and sat outside in the garden with Dad while Mum swept the yard. It was just past dawn outside, with a sleepy blue sky and sweet taste of dew in the air. The breeze smelled of young leaves and clover. And suddenly I remembered why this has always been my favourite time of day. Being awake in the early morning air is like drinking a long draught of cool spring water, or holding a gurgling baby against your chest, all velvet skin and love-scented hair and promise. No wonder I've been so down for weeks; I've missed this part of the day every day till now.
Dad and I talked, really talked, for the first time. I think both my parents finally accepted that I was really ill, and that this was not some delusion I'd come up with through being holed up in front of the computer for hours on end. I told him what it felt like to go through this, how helpless I felt, how I couldn't get a thing done by myself and how stressed out I was feeling about my ever-growing to-do list and deadlines.
"So, basically, you feel like someone else is controlling you?" asked Dad.
"No, Dad," I said wearily, "I feel like my brain is a car and somebody shut down the engine and ran off with the keys!"
Dad laughed. But I think he understood.
We spent the next half hour discussing my to-do list in detail, and making a schedule to get the most important things done, one at a time, so I won't be overwhelmed. He pointed out stuff that I should put off for later which weren't pressing, even though I felt guilty about not doing them. For example, I really should go and visit my friend Marina, who has had a baby. I feel terribly guilty that I haven't gone to see them yet. Dad pointed out that the kid wasn't going anywhere, so I could postphone it to next month at least. Etcetera, etcetera.
So today, he is picking me up during his lunch hour to go and register for my IELTS at the British Council. It's rather galling to have to be hand-held through stuff that I would normally get done by myself in a trice, but the bottom line is, things are getting done. Which is the important thing, at the mo.
It is the unspoken household rule that my sister and I can't ever have a good day both together. Either she's being a model kid and I'm being a freak, or she's being a brat and I'm being the voice of reason. So today, it was her turn to be the bone of family contention. She ran everybody late by being in the shower too long, glared and yowled the whole time Mum was trying to comb the tangles out of her hair and threw a fit when she discovered that Mum had switched the cake tin with her lunch box by accident, so that the cake was in her lunch box and her lunch was in a yellow ice-cream container.
"I'm not taking that thing to school!" she yelled, stomping her foot. Nobody could help laughing at her, because it was such a dead-on impression of an eight-year-old, and this kid is eighteen years old, dude, and two inches taller than I am.
It's very unusual for Chuti's antics to crack everyone up, because usually Dad doesn't stand for this sort of nonsense. He'd read her the riot act and Mum would try to play peacemaker, and the both of them would just get angrier and louder and the Li'l Bro would get upset (he is hyper-sensitive to discord because he's autistic) and then he would start throwing a tantrum and the motley crew of humanity that would finally wend its way out the door (too late to beat the traffic) would be a piece of howling Bedlam.
So, yes, today has kicked off to an auspicious start.
On a side note, I find myself quite amused that I have become one of those people who lounge around the house for half the day in their pajamas. I don't know when that happened. Until recently, I wouldn't have been caught dead in pajamas past seven o'clock. Of course, those were also the days Pre-Sleep Screw Up, when sleeping past 6.30 even on the weekend, was considered sacrilegious by my salt-of-the-earth family.
When she's eighty-five and senile and driving me up the wall, this is how I want to remember her. A sleepy warmth, soft arms around me, the smell of hot chocolate and a feeling of safety. I can forgive her a good deal for that.
Anyway, as anxiety attacks go, this one was baby cakes. Plus, I felt better afterward, as I always do. I went downstairs with my mug of hot Milo and sat outside in the garden with Dad while Mum swept the yard. It was just past dawn outside, with a sleepy blue sky and sweet taste of dew in the air. The breeze smelled of young leaves and clover. And suddenly I remembered why this has always been my favourite time of day. Being awake in the early morning air is like drinking a long draught of cool spring water, or holding a gurgling baby against your chest, all velvet skin and love-scented hair and promise. No wonder I've been so down for weeks; I've missed this part of the day every day till now.
Dad and I talked, really talked, for the first time. I think both my parents finally accepted that I was really ill, and that this was not some delusion I'd come up with through being holed up in front of the computer for hours on end. I told him what it felt like to go through this, how helpless I felt, how I couldn't get a thing done by myself and how stressed out I was feeling about my ever-growing to-do list and deadlines.
"So, basically, you feel like someone else is controlling you?" asked Dad.
"No, Dad," I said wearily, "I feel like my brain is a car and somebody shut down the engine and ran off with the keys!"
Dad laughed. But I think he understood.
We spent the next half hour discussing my to-do list in detail, and making a schedule to get the most important things done, one at a time, so I won't be overwhelmed. He pointed out stuff that I should put off for later which weren't pressing, even though I felt guilty about not doing them. For example, I really should go and visit my friend Marina, who has had a baby. I feel terribly guilty that I haven't gone to see them yet. Dad pointed out that the kid wasn't going anywhere, so I could postphone it to next month at least. Etcetera, etcetera.
So today, he is picking me up during his lunch hour to go and register for my IELTS at the British Council. It's rather galling to have to be hand-held through stuff that I would normally get done by myself in a trice, but the bottom line is, things are getting done. Which is the important thing, at the mo.
It is the unspoken household rule that my sister and I can't ever have a good day both together. Either she's being a model kid and I'm being a freak, or she's being a brat and I'm being the voice of reason. So today, it was her turn to be the bone of family contention. She ran everybody late by being in the shower too long, glared and yowled the whole time Mum was trying to comb the tangles out of her hair and threw a fit when she discovered that Mum had switched the cake tin with her lunch box by accident, so that the cake was in her lunch box and her lunch was in a yellow ice-cream container.
"I'm not taking that thing to school!" she yelled, stomping her foot. Nobody could help laughing at her, because it was such a dead-on impression of an eight-year-old, and this kid is eighteen years old, dude, and two inches taller than I am.
It's very unusual for Chuti's antics to crack everyone up, because usually Dad doesn't stand for this sort of nonsense. He'd read her the riot act and Mum would try to play peacemaker, and the both of them would just get angrier and louder and the Li'l Bro would get upset (he is hyper-sensitive to discord because he's autistic) and then he would start throwing a tantrum and the motley crew of humanity that would finally wend its way out the door (too late to beat the traffic) would be a piece of howling Bedlam.
So, yes, today has kicked off to an auspicious start.
On a side note, I find myself quite amused that I have become one of those people who lounge around the house for half the day in their pajamas. I don't know when that happened. Until recently, I wouldn't have been caught dead in pajamas past seven o'clock. Of course, those were also the days Pre-Sleep Screw Up, when sleeping past 6.30 even on the weekend, was considered sacrilegious by my salt-of-the-earth family.
