Posts tagged with "anxiety"

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My sin­gle-lens reflex used to be a con­stant com­pan­ion on my trips, some­thing I car­ried with me every­where so I could have visu­al records of my expe­ri­ences. Nowadays, my only inten­tion is sur­vival. Always try­ing to make sure I’m nev­er too hun­gry, tired, anx­ious, or sober, lest I have break­down in an unfa­mil­iar place. It leaves lit­tle room for com­fort, even less for any form of artis­tic expres­sion. Fortunately, I always have with me a smart­phone with a cam­era. It may not be able to give me the razor-thin depth-of-field that I favour, but it can cap­ture things in slow motion, which is great for cock­apoos who are born to fetch.

I thought I was sta­ble enough to make it a few hours in a house alone with one of her broth­ers, but the anx­i­ety attack I had while try­ing to fall asleep taught me oth­er­wise. Being in the pres­ence of a per­son with such a flat affect reminds me too much of the time in my life when I was so numb and bro­ken that noth­ing could pro­voke inter­est or emo­tion. Sometimes I’ll find him in a lounge chair for hours, legs reclined, com­plete­ly motion­less and silent and star­ing into space. Even though we’re all glad he’s home and no longer liv­ing on the streets, being around him can be a dis­com­fort­ing still-face exper­i­ment I’d rather not take part in.

Her mom knows how hard it is for me to leave the house, let alone trav­el to anoth­er town, so she always makes her con­tent­ment known when I show up at her door. The shelves in her house are adorned with pic­tures of cou­ples, fam­i­lies, chil­dren, records of a life rich with friend­ships and mem­o­ries. I’m hon­oured to be among them, for I can­not con­cede to being sig­nif­i­cant enough to take up such space in many oth­er homes.

She’s the clos­est I’ll ever have to a moth­er-in-law, and she gives me a hug and tells me she loves me for the first time as we leave. Heather will lat­er ask if I think it’s true, know­ing how hard it can be for me to process and accept love after so many bro­ken rela­tion­ships with sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple. I tell her I haven’t been giv­en a rea­son believe oth­er­wise.

(be)longing

I wish I could say I made the deci­sion not to do any­thing for Christmas this year, but the truth is that I no longer have a place to go after becom­ing orphaned in ear­ly adult­hood. Then Shirley’s divorce broke the tra­di­tion of vis­it­ing her fam­i­ly when I first moved to Ottawa, and three years of a glob­al pan­dem­ic haven’t helped either.

Heather could have gone home on Christmas Day but decid­ed to stay with me, know­ing it would be espe­cial­ly cru­el to be alone when every­one else is exchang­ing gifts and enjoy­ing the com­pa­ny of oth­ers. I’m glad it was some­thing she could intu­it; telling some­one to be apart from their loved ones for my sake is some­thing I would nev­er do.

christmas card

The pho­to we used for our Christmas card this year, tak­en when we went shop­ping for my birth­day. Her Oma, who’s too old to have a com­put­er, let alone a social media account, always appre­ci­ates a phys­i­cal copy.

She spent so much of her pre­cious time and ener­gy buying/making thought­ful presents that I felt she deserved all the cred­it, but it was impor­tant to her that peo­ple knew they were from both of us though, so I acqui­esced to her request of “+ Jeff” on each card. It was a gift itself that did­n’t go unap­pre­ci­at­ed.

Even though I’ve come to shirk the oblig­a­tory con­sumerism of such occa­sions, she gave me a stock­ing stuffed with good­ies from my favourite choco­lati­er, some lux­u­ry teas, and three pairs of classy socks to go with with the new pants I got ear­li­er this year. It helped make up for the fact that I could­n’t accom­pa­ny her on her trip home the next day. I’ve been anx­ious­ly wait­ing to intro­duce her mom to more music and meet Max’s new dog, but I’m still too dam­aged to leave the house for more than a few hours at a time before seduc­tive thoughts of eter­nal peace creep to the front of my head and I can no longer breathe.

Among the presents she brought back was more Moselland Cat Riesling that will like­ly become a cus­tom ever since Max spot­ted a bot­tle in a store. Her dad, whom we pre­sume is on the spec­trum, includes the same things in each of the kids stock­ings every year — cheap floss, mint Tic-Tacs, a bot­tle of lock de-icer, vit­a­min D tablets, and win­ter cloth­ing that would be too big for Shaq. I’d nor­mal­ly feel hurt if some­one kept thought­less­ly giv­ing me things that I have no use for, but in this case it’s a nice reminder that I’m part of that fam­i­ly, even when I’m not there.

Helpless Wondering

I’m almost ready for spring. The win­ter isn’t get­ting on my nerves quite yet. The only thing I miss right now is being able to dri­ve com­fort­ably with­out a heavy coat on.

I’ve been feel­ing ter­ri­bly help­less late­ly. There are so many things in my life that are out of my con­trol — health, love, mon­ey, work — that I’ve actu­al­ly con­sid­ered doing a thought record for the first time since I fin­ished ther­a­py. Last week I woke up chok­ing in the mid­dle of the night. Then half way through the day I start­ed devel­op­ing mod­er­ate chest pains. I try not to wor­ry when I’m awake, but at night, in my sleep, every­thing comes out. Maybe every­thing is start­ing to get to me.

I want things to hap­pen quick­ly. I’m impa­tient. I want to be proac­tive, but there’s not much I can do. Verse 42 of the Tao Te Ching has been speak­ing to me:

Who knows what fate may bring —
  one day your loss may be your for­tune
  one day your for­tune may be your loss

While I usu­al­ly crave the flux between con­stan­cy and change, I pre­fer it in one thing at a time. It feels like I’m going through anoth­er tran­si­tion peri­od. Nothing around me is set­tled.

All I can do is wait to see where I end up.

Long Exposure

It snowed all day yes­ter­day, and well into the night. The white­ness out­side reflects the sky and has filled my house with bright light. It’s the week­end and I’m awake.

Banana smoothie

Banana smoothie

I’ve fall­en in love with smooth­ies. They are usu­al­ly com­prised of three bananas, three tan­ger­ines, a third of a pineap­ple, yogurt, juice, and frozen 4‑fruit berry or sum­mer fruit sal­ad. I have three a day. This makes me poo like crazy.

Life has been exhaust­ing­ly busy. The pho­to ses­sions are over, post-pro­cess­ing is done, and my pic­tures are all print­ed. The only thing left is to get them framed. I had my first ses­sion with my psy­chol­o­gist. I’m can­celling my Tai Chi tomor­row. I have to plan my relax­ation, and this does­n’t make it very relax­ing.

This week­end I hope to:

  • catch up on my e‑mails
  • fill out a bunch of forms my psy­chol­o­gist gave me, includ­ing a mul­ti­modal life his­to­ry inven­to­ry
  • order some Moo cards
  • work on a clien­t’s web­site
  • add a photography/portfolio sec­tion to my site
  • fit some fun in there some­where

Next week is going to be even more crazy, no pun intend­ed. Monday I’m meet­ing with the framer, Tuesday and Thursday I have Tai Chi, Wednesday I’m hav­ing din­ner at the gallery and meet­ing the oth­er artists.

I haven’t been sleep­ing well. In the midst of all this socia­bil­i­ty, I’ve been bat­tling my anx­i­ety. It’s filled me with a qui­et deter­mi­na­tion, but the long expo­sure has worn me down.

Krista and Shane at Irene's

Flyer for the show at Irene's Pub

I asked Julie to come to the show with me. I did it with trep­i­da­tion, because I con­sid­ered it a big favour, and felt like I did­n’t know her well enough to ask. But Blake was out of town and she was going out on Saturday, so it just hap­pened that she decid­ed to keep her Friday free.

It pret­ty much saved me. When dri­ving to the pub, I was hit with an anx­i­ety attack, which I’ll elab­o­rate on in anoth­er entry some­day.

Julie was the per­fect per­son to bring, I imag­ine because she has expe­ri­ence with peo­ple who suf­fer from anx­i­ety. I told her I may sud­den­ly want to leave at any point, pos­si­bly even on the way there. She told me she did­n’t mind com­ing, she did­n’t mind leav­ing, she did­n’t even mind stand­ing out­side the pub with me for a cou­ple min­utes in ‑16°C weath­er while I men­tal­ly pre­pared myself. I owe her big time.

Me and Julie

We played cards to get my mind off the anx­i­ety. I taught her how to play Slapjack, she taught me how to play Egyptian War. It worked.

While wait­ing for the show to start, I gave Krista the large prints from the pre­vi­ous shows. Krista gave us some ran­dom Larry and Bob bal­loon stick­ers she found on the bus (Julie and I think they were from a deaf per­son). Julie also met Cory there, her school­mate from hor­ti­cul­ture col­lege, and Krista’s sis­ter.

At the first show, I told Shane he should make an acoustic ver­sion of his album. Since I paid him in per­son for a pre-release EP that night, he told me he did have an acoustic ver­sion and promised to give it to me. I asked him ear­li­er this week if he could bring it, which he did, but he for­got it in his suit­case. Quite a pity, since he told me he was in the stu­dio mak­ing sure he mixed it right for me. He felt ter­ri­ble about it, and told me he’d mail it to me instead. March 14th is when the album offi­cial­ly comes out.

The sets were rather short. Shanker and Romps opened for them, a garage rock­a­bil­ly duo. Our view of this per­for­mance was a bunch of peo­ple who were much taller than our­selves.

The high­light of the show was see­ing Shane per­form It’s A Drag (and get­ting a video of it!), my favourite song on the album. Krista did the back­up vocals. This is the only time you’ll hear such a dul­cet har­mo­ny from anoth­er awe­some artist, cer­tain­ly some­thing you can only expe­ri­ence from a tour. Krista also got Cory up on stage for the Bumblebee Song as an encore.

Julie asked me if I still had a crush on Krista. I had to think about it for a lit­tle bit, and the fact that I had to think about it made me real­ize that I don’t any­more.

Other shows with Krista Muir and Shane Watt

  1. At the Workshop Studio & Boutique
  2. At Le Petit Salon des Arts
  3. At Irene’s Pub