I really do normally aim for funny in all of my literary ventures (lengthy Instagram posts), but sometimes Funny just isn't hanging out with me.  Like today.  Something I'll bring up often on this blog is that I live with anxiety.  Generally, it's not something I'm suffering from, it's rather more like another part of me.  A third party inside of me - so there's me (the brains of the outfit), my spirit (my connection with God), and anxiety me.  Anxiety is a vital part of what makes me so wonderfully mediocre, because when she's going to town with fret - I get absolutely nothing done.
We've been together for as long as I can remember.  Anxiety me has always hovered just below my normal, but around 7 years ago, she became my forerunner.  My soul and I can't make many decisions without elbowing Anxiety to see what her thoughts might be on the matter.  I'd definitely say that it's a crutch now.  But, a crutch is way better than what she has been for me, before I really dug deep and got to know her.  I confronted my anxiety head on by using anti-anxiety medication, and a complete mental breakdown about 6 years ago.  There really is no learning experience quite like getting bashed down to your lowest point.  You have to recover, you have to learn, you have to adapt, when something like that happens.  So now we're buds, and I can look my anxiety in the eye, and really SEE her.  I normally can tell her to sit down and shut the hell up, even.  Pat her on the head, acknowledge her concerns, and then turn away from her.  Golly sometimes though, sometimes...  I just can't fight her.  It usually happens when I'm tired or my brain has too many thought paths it's trying to travel.  She takes on another form, a feral one that climbs up onto my shoulders and peers over every thought I have.  One that weighs me down with the pressure of "Not Ever Knowing For Sure".  I stumble through those days feeling like I'm at an endless Crossfit WOD, and that shit gets tiring.  Physically, mentally, emotionally - tiring.  I feel so weary by the time I lay down in my bed, but Anxiety is still there, chewing on me now.  Each little bite she takes from me is her way of introducing everything Brain hasn't already thought of.  She's relentless on these dark days.  Biting and bringing up any facet of my life that I haven't scanned for issues yet, hungrily feeding on my imagination.  I have several ways now that I handle this wild and unruly part of myself, one of them is meditation (and prayer during meditation).  I have been successful at mentally balancing myself for the better part of 5 years now, and I'll proudly say that that's even while suffering through a late-term miscarriage (stillborn, in my heart - I delivered a stillborn baby).  It's an endless dance of acknowledging, processing, and quieting.  Today though, is one of those days that nothing is working.  Not my usual stare-down with Anxiety, not my conversations with my sister and husband, not my meditation.  The focus of my anxiety, even though Brain knows it's irrelevant and just what Anxiety has chosen to honor with her dedication today, is my 2 year old son.  He has woken up a couple of times tonight, and I held him sleeping in my lap while I checked him over.  He really wanted to be asleep, yet there I sat, holding him and listening to him breathe, and wondering why his leg was twitching once, twice.  The days that Anxiety bleeds out of me and smears her influence over my children and husband are the darkest.  Those days, I can't hold her back, even though I'm fully aware that she is poisoning them, too.  That's the part that makes my heart hurt the most.  I know how the rest of tonight will go, and it won't involve any sleep.  Maybe a couple of hours, around 5am.  With luck, Anxiety will draw herself back down by morning and settle in to my chest, where she lives in a sharp pressure I constantly feel.  Better there than crouching on my shoulders, though.  At least with her in my chest, I can move relatively fluently through life.

A Rant Towards Those Who Rant

Sometimes I think people get really, heartbreakingly, wholly caught up in the business of "How I (as No.1) Feel", and it puts those ever-oppressive blinders on, to the point that we all forget to be kind.  And open-minded.  And kind.  Gosh you guys, being open-minded doesn't mean you have to place yourself on the dusty couch of the neighborhood hippie to smoke weed and talk about world peace!  It means that you place yourself, for the smallest (yet impactful) moment in time, in someone else's shoes.  Wait, that's awfully cliche.  Try this instead:  Stand behind your intellectual enemy, peek out to the side to view the world how they might be seeing it.  Maybe you'll catch something that snuck by you before, some little thing that gives you pause.  The smallest detail that brings *shocker* another perspective into focus.  Don't stand in front with your finger in their face screaming "You're wrong because I said so!".  Voicing strong opinions on Facebook turns into [AZ Gov.] Jan Brewer-esque finger pointing scarily fast.  Hold on though, what if you're wrong because they said so??  But then it just gets silly, bringing to mind Dr. Suess' most stubborn characters - the Zax.  Those two curmudgeons wouldn't budge an inch for years and years, and no issue was ever solved, they never got to where they were goin'!  It seemed ridiculous to me as a child (aka - I hated that book a lot), and it's even more so now. Quite a few of us go to church as Christians and hear the word 'charity' fairly often, but then we go home and pull up Facebook and some troll has posted an article that goshdarnit, gets your goat! and charity takes a back seat to indignation.  Where has that gotten us?  Angry.  We are in a perpetual state of angry.

Let's pause for a *DISCLAIMER*.  Lest you think I am full of love and light towards all God's creatures, I must confess I am not.  I'm as angry as they come, snarky as they come, sarcastic (oh how the joy of sweet, sweet sarcasm fills my bitter soul!) as they come, and opinionated as they (whoever 'they' might be) come.  And let's face it, I'm totally right all the time.  But since I have been on the suck end of many situations and topics, I've chosen to reign in my vocal presence on many a topic.  I like to cool my fingers for a few minutes before I comment or post or share, just because chances are that if a person feels strongly about something - my witty, fact-filled sentences to the contrary won't do a darn thing.  If I can be in my corner with my arms folded and not budging an inch, so can my adversaries.  What I can do differently though, is again, stand behind them to see if I can find out why they might feel so strongly and opposingly about whatever hot topic is raging through my Facebook or news feed for the day.  My scarily wise Dad put me onto this path of charitable feelings while I was on a (correct) rant about an anti-something person, when he said simply "everyone is afraid of something Abbey, it just might not be what you're afraid of". TRUTH BOMB.  I was totally expecting him to agree with me, expecting him to pat me on the head and say "you are right, my child", but no.  Just the opposite!  I can count on one hand the times my bratty mouth has been stopped in its tracks, and this was one of them.  The more I think about it, the more it applies to almost every difference of opinion that I might come across.  Try it!  You'll be astonished.

Example:  Person A freakin' loves mushrooms.  They're a great alternative to meat, they're all natural, they're gluten free, they absorb any flavor you cook them in!  Person B though, wow, does Person B hate mushrooms.  They're unnaturally grey in color, they develop an unsettling slime when cooked, they smell unlike any ingestible food ever, and they are a fungus literally grown from poop.  Let's pretend Person A and Person B are tied up and are being forced to eat a meal, say... beef stroganoff, together (as we're planning this meal, pretend the "meal" they're being forced to "eat" is reading Facebook posts - see where I'm going with this?).  Now, take sides.  Mushroom lovers scoot on over with Person A, mushroom haters run on over with Person B.  Wait, did I just see your mom go over with the other person?  Your spouse?  Your friend?!  That can't be right.  Someone you love can't possibly feel different than you do about mushrooms!  Oh but it's true.  It's a sad, ugly truth.  Someone that you love, that you chose to love, that loves you! hates mushrooms.  And they joined a large contingent of mushroom haters!  The horror!  Ok, back to the meal.  Now that you have been betrayed and someone has a different feeling than you do, let's get to eatin'.  We've got our yumm-o beef stroganoff all cooked up and all that's left to do is add that big, steamy, slimy pile of mushrooms to the sauce and we're ready to eat.  Crap.  Look at Mom and hunky husband so cute over there with Person B on the other side of the mushroom fence.  You can't force them to eat a mushroom, even though you love them so dearly, that wouldn't be nice at all!  What can we do about this?????
Split up the stroganoff, stir the mushrooms in half of it, leave the other half fungus-free - and eat.  Person B's team will try most valiantly to not gag while they watch you eat your mushrooms, and Person A's team will feel pity for the mushroomless, yet still find a way to eat their food.  Bam, done.  We're all stuffed to the rafters and happy.

I hope you followed that theoretical representation of opinions.  Person B's team has begun life from a place of fear about mushrooms (even the word sounds gross to them).  A legitimate fear!  Person A's team has a very valid fear that there are not enough mushrooms available to eat.  Also, a legitimate fear!  Doesn't it put us, as the whole of humanity (hey, world peace! and I got there without the weed!) in a much better place if we just let some people be afraid of mushrooms and let some think they're great?  Geez, why the fight?

Now, sometimes, later on in life when most taste buds have died, they can be fooled into thinking a mushroom tastes good.  And, conversely, some chemical change might have occurred in a person and render a mushroom vile upon the mere sight.  Let's call these developments experiences and trials.  They change us.  Our opinions might soften, bend, or take an entirely different direction.  Or they won't.  But now that you know that it's possible to legitimately feel differently about something, don't you think you'll pause before you put that crazy friend/cousin/acquaintance/etc. on blast about their opinion/feelings/dreams/political leanings/sketchily-gathered research/etc.?

I sure freakin' hope so.  I'm super tired of seeing rational people lose their minds over mushrooms.

For those who were dying of curiosity all throughout this post - I absolutely abhor mushrooms.  I am Person B.  So is my husband, Grandma, and one sister (except I've seen her eat them sometimes - maybe her tastebuds have died).  However my Mom, Dad (he can go without sometimes though, thankfully), other sister, and several more people I consider very dear friends all love them.
And dammit if I don't love them nonetheless!