My journey through pain - 19. Chapter 19 - Time as a friend

They say time heals. During these last troubled months, I have heard this phrase often and I have gone through so many different ways of reacting to it. I have rejected it as impossible. I have desperately clung to it as my last shred of hope. I have marveled at its truth every now and then, when fleeting moments have shown me that there is true wisdom behind that statement. For the most part, however, I have kind of kept that thought in my mind, that time will heal me, simultaneously hoping it is true and not daring to truly hope it will be. It sounds confusing, and contradictory, but that’s the way I sometimes think about things, particularly good ones. When the situation is bad, emotionally speaking, I get so bogged down by everything that I have a very hard time reaching out to grab some hope. I doubt myself and I doubt everything else. Sometimes the fear runs so deep that it contaminates my ability to hope, and it’s awful. But I keep fighting, nevertheless. And time does go by.

It is only in the last few days that I have started feeling a change in my mind. I think it is a positive change, though I’m not sure. I still feel anxious, panicky, all of that. But sometimes, now, I experience those emotions as if… Dampened. It’s like a situation will arise where I know I’m going to freak out, or spiral down all the way into panic, but now the emotions don’t hit me as hard. It’s tough to be specific about the change because it’s been so gradual and it is so faint, but I can see the difference when I compare my reactions to similar stimuli today and a few weeks ago. For example, I had to take another long trip last week and I was anxious about it. I did not enjoy it, and, just like a similar trip I took about two weeks ago, I was assailed by memories and negative associations all throughout the journey. Nevertheless, this time around the bad thoughts were much less frequent and the sharp stabs of sadness and anxiety did not cut quite so deep. I actually didn’t notice the difference until after I returned home, because the day was very similar to that other day two weeks ago. I was very busy all throughout, but whereas the last time it took every ounce of energy I had to make it through the day, this time around it was more like 60%. I have more motivation. It is less hard to get started with the day in the morning. It is still not easy – far from it. But it is not as hard as it was.

I think this is because time is passing. I think time is my friend and it is helping me begin to internalize and process all of the bad things into a new, more resilient construct of my own self-image and my idea of the reality around me. A couple days ago I was thinking about this and I likened it to something like a psychic wound that is healing. At the beginning, and up until very recently, when a bad thought or negative association was triggered, it was like my mind was an open wound, raw, and the thought was a poking finger into it, which was horribly painful and made me recoil from it, hoping the pain would stop. Now, not always but sometimes, the bad thoughts come and they poke the wound, but it’s starting to heal and it’s like there’s a very faint layer of scar tissue between that external negative stimulus and my mind. It still hurts, but the pain is dampened. And because it hurts less I can react in a more rational way towards whatever triggered the entire episode, sometimes even analyzing it logically and putting it to the side.

It happens with good things and bad things. Yesterday for example, I was able to listen to a little bit of music as I walked my dog. It had been weeks since I have been able to do that – it was a tiny thing, but incredibly significant to me. I have also found that I am less terrified of trying new things, which was a total no-go a couple months ago. For example, two days ago I took my very first yoga class ever. Although I wasn’t really able to relax, and I kind of panicked in the middle of it because it was an entirely new situation and there were several things I wasn’t used to, I’m happy I tried something new and I’m looking forward to the next class next week. It’s a new challenge, definitely – I go to the gym a lot and I swim, but my body is definitely in desperate need of more flexibility and strength in some of the muscles that I may have neglected. Yoga is tough! I need a lot more strength in my shoulders, my core, and my legs. I also need to learn how to breathe. I think this new activity will be good for me in the long run. And it is an example of something I am now able to do which I wouldn’t have been emotionally strong enough to try earlier. It gives me hope that I am indeed healing.

Not everything is perfect, obviously, and there are still some things that are not very good. But even then, I find that this new sort of mental resilience that is developing in me can help a lot. Last night is a very good example. I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t fall asleep. I went to bed like usual and did my normal routine to prepare, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, my anxiety levels rose and I don’t really know why. I must have spent around two hours just tossing and turning, desperately trying to fall asleep and trying not to give into the rising panic which is so horribly familiar. I was finally able to doze off at some point, but my sleep was fragmented, not very restful, and it stressed me out because I was tired to begin with. These last few days have been very busy and I was looking forward to resting. Nevertheless, I was too wound up to really relax at any point in the night. Today, by all accounts, I should be a nervous wreck because of the lack of sleep. I should have had a panic attack in the night and right now my anxiety levels should be at a ten out of ten… But they aren’t. I am trying something new: Sure, I had a bad night. I don’t even know why. But all of us have bad nights every now and then, and it doesn’t mean that all of my nights in the future will be as bad as this one. In fact, this may be just a one-off, a night where for one reason or another my mind was too anxious to really shut down, but there’s no reason to think this coming night will be the same. In fact, since I’m kind of tired already, I can look forward to maybe sleeping better tonight.

It seems like such a tiny shift in perspective, but to me it is gigantic. Instead of giving in to catastrophizing, as my psychiatrist puts it, where I tend to take one negative experience and extrapolate it into the future, I am trying to just look at the experience for what it really is and detach it from any emotional baggage I want to pile onto it. A bad night is just bad night. It does not mean I am a failure, which is one of the more common thoughts that torment me when something like this happens – I tend to begin thinking that it is all my fault and that I will never be able to sleep again and so on and so forth. But maybe it was just something that happened. It was bad, but I’ll live. There is no reason to become terrified that this bad experience will repeat itself, because then the only thing I’m doing is making everything bigger. The more I fixate on not ever wanting to have a bad night again, the more likely I make bad nights. So now, I will take advantage of the fact that the bad emotions and the bad thoughts that come to me don’t hurt quite as much anymore and I will try to put events like this one into perspective. I will try to, gently, stop obsessing so much about my emotional state each and every second and start… You know. Living. It’s not easy, and there’s this little part of me that is scared this new resilience will go away and leave me vulnerable and exposed once again. But there’s this bigger part of me that says no. If I feel better now, it’s because of everything that others have done for me and everything I have done for myself in the days leading up to today. I have been working very hard on building a good foundation for my emotional well-being and, maybe, this is the first sign that it is beginning to pay off. Maybe I am truly beginning to climb out of the darkness for good. And, besides, time keeps passing and as it does, it helps me heal a little bit at a time. Tiny bit by tiny bit, it helps me put things into perspective. It helps me stop hurting so much from everything I lost and it helps me begin to appreciate everything I have gained. I’m beginning to feel more hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, I am beginning to get the upper hand on fear.