STOP AVOIDING

If you know me well enough, you know my constant pursuit of knowledge runs deep.  So it's of no surprise then that I am in two courses one my herbal immersion program (which is two years), and recently I began an intuitive plant medicine course which runs through spring and summer.  

Both are equally blowing my mind, but an exercise I was assigned for the intuitive course yesterday, provided me with some insight into myself, that was always on the surface for me to just recognize, but I never wanted to acknowledge it. 

With it being ALS awareness month as I spoke on yesterday, and I'm used to sharing my ups and downs with Steve, I want to share this one.  The rest I think I'll keep to my journal, the plants, stones, trees, and me. :)

So I have moments with Steve, where he could say, "you're beautiful," and I want to bite his head off.  This is beyond just a wife being annoyed at her husband, or a caregiver annoyed at her patient (I don't like that word but it's what fits here).  It's much deeper and hidden, because I of course avoided looking the issue in the eye.  I hid it with all sorts of excuses and hurt feelings.

Truth is, I feel stress every single minute of every single day about Steve.  When I sleep I will sometimes jump out of bed in a panic to see if Steve's okay; tossing and turning through the night with lots of visions of wounds, and UTI discharge, and unpleasantries.   (I really feel like that should be a word).

Every herbal remedy I learn about, I contemplate if I can use it on Steve, every plant I talk to, I ask it to help guide me with Steve.  It's like my life is completely run by Steve and ALS. Without wanting to recognize that I have been filled the the brim with anxiety, it comes out in little spurts of, "Stop interrupting me's."  This isn't the first time I've written on understanding my behaviors with Steve, nor will it probably be the last.  I am well aware that life is a constant teaching (if you're paying attention).  

Here I am trying to do things to feed my soul, so I can be a better person, caregiver, wife; and instead of it feeding my soul, it's feeding my obsession.  I'm a woman obsessed with finding things to help.  Obsession isn't new to me.  It's something that happens, I find something I like and I'm obsessed until I get what I need out of it, or it takes over me, and I have to let it go.

Well, I'm here laying under a pile of obsessive thoughts, clearing away some of the rubble to reach the light.  Of course, I don't want to dismiss all that this journey has brought me, and the deep connection to the earth and flowers I'm growing.  It's not that I'm not being enriched in any way, it's that there is a big bug eating away at my beautiful green leafs, and instead of stopping, the bugs reproducing and taking out the whole crop. 

So what do I do about it?  One is to acknowledge it.  I'm anxious, I'm obsessed, I'm stressed out, and it's all my mind.  It's constantly going and even while I meditate it's still spewing it's baby bug eggs.  

This is where I am, and maybe I need a fire ceremony, or a group of my girlfriends to come and dump bottles of wine down my throat?  I don't truthfully have the answer, because I haven't wanted to admit it.  I just want to avoid it like I have been everything.  I avoid people, bills, responsibilities, voicemail, messages, mailing products, admitting where I'm spiraling.  So maybe all I do for now is sit with it.  Stop avoiding.

Sometimes I don't know why I feel so pulled to share my weaknesses on a public forum. Seriously, today after I wrote all about these thoughts, I couldn't shake the feeling.  I literally said out loud, to all that's listening, "Not this, really?"  I went about and got things ready for wound care, and the computer was pulling me in like a magnet.  So here I am.  Maybe it's the fairies guiding me to help someone they see needing the words, or it's God reminding me that I can't hide from anyone including myself.  Either way, here's some awareness on life with ALS for you.