Morning Dark

It’s been almost seven months since I started this blog and Instagram. I was taking an online photo course at the time from one of my favorite blogger/author/photographer/influencers, and she suggested this book, A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart. The photo class was amazing, the book was inspirational, and I my creative juices were itching for an outlet as our summer began. And so Good Morning, Sunshine was born, my own year long photo project chronicling my new life as an early morning person as necessitated by my tiny early riser, and named for my daily, sleepy greeting to her beaming smile and sparkling eyes, “Good morning, Sunshine!” 

Since the beginning I’ve shared sunrises and Pink Drink Tuesdays. Baking and laundry. Messes, snuggles, touching moments, and many, many cups of coffee. There have been birthdays, camping trips, holidays, and more, and while I’ve tried to keep it “real” instead of always “Instagram Perfect” (hello, week old pile of laundry), I’ve also tried to keep the overall tone a positive one. No one wants to hear a 30-something homeschooling house wife talking about how they cried over the dishes, or how they had to give themselves a pep-talk just to get out of bed that day. However, I’ve come to realize that if I avoid those things completely then I’m not being real, and if I’m not being real then what is the point? What am I chronicling? And, worse yet, what if someone is looking at my pictures or reading what I’m writing feeling like they’re failing because they can’t find the sunshine in the dark? 

Not all of my days start out with a smile and a kiss. Sometimes they start out like this morning. Where I wake up at 3:30, not able to breath in the dark, without knowing why. I don’t know if it is a dream, or instinct, or just the urge to use the restroom, but I go from asleep to awake as fast as if someone screamed in my ear. It often begins with something really simple like checking Bash’s blood sugar numbers, or peeking over at Mabel while she sleeps, but then...Is she breathing? Yes, she’s breathing. Are you sure? Yes. But what if she stops? I’ll just lay here and watch her for awhile. School starts back up this week. Am I ruining their lives by homeschooling? I’m ruining their lives by homeschooling. We have to drive down to The Springs again next week. What if the van dies while we’re driving? What if an idiot hits us? What if we all die? Am I a good mom? I can’t ruin them. I can’t make them feel how I felt. I didn’t finish that pile of laundry last night! Why am I so bad at that?  

It is funny to read. It’s even funny to write, but that’s how fast my mind starts flipping from one thing to the next. How fast I go from asleep to full blown panic attack. At least I know what it is now. When I was diagnosed with anxiety, twelve years ago now, I had no idea what it was. I had no idea how to cope with it. I was finally diagnosed after a trip to the ER, because I genuinely thought I was having a heart attack. At 23. Even knowing what is happening and knowing how to cope, even though I have another little voice in my head going “It’s just a panic attack. You know that. Anxiety is a liar.”, it doesn’t always help. And, despite what he might think, I can’t just wake up my husband every time this happens and tell him that I’m terrified that we’re going to get into a car wreck, that the house is going to burn down, that he’s going to deploy again and not come home, or that we’re all going to die in a fiery plane crash. (We don’t have plane tickets to go anywhere, by the way.) 

So I try all my tricks to pull me out of it. Breathing. Sometimes breathing helps, especially if I combine it with the 5-4-3-2-1 Coping Technique. (Acknowledge 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.) But anxiety is a tricky beast, and that doesn’t always work either. Sometimes I have to read, or watch TV, or clean, or just go in the bathroom to have a good cry. And sometimes none of that works either. Sometimes, instead of watching the sunrise with my Tiny girl snuggled in a blanket in my lap and a hot cup of coffee in my hands, I watch it rise from my bed where I’ve spent 3 or 4 hours trying to will the panic to subside and my body to fall back to sleep. 

And eventually it will, or exhaustion will just take over, and things are okay again when I wake up. I give myself a little shake and laugh off whatever it was that had me so worried in the dark, and Michael insists that I should have woken him up, but I’m okay. I might be a little more bleary eyed during my morning snuggles, but an extra cup of coffee helps, and I can find myself genuinely cheered up by the fact that Grandpapa Bunny decided to spend his Sunday in a bright,  citrus covered dress. (We don’t judge.) 

This is anxiety. It’s real, it’s a bitch, and if you have it you aren’t odd, you aren’t crazy, and you aren’t alone. And it is high time we start telling people that.