I began revising an essay about how our perspective on the things we must do is the difference between a happy life and a miserable one. Instead I found myself writing four pages about my experiences with anxiety disorder during the Fall of 2007. I’m usually much better about staying on topic. Then I started to think about it. Those anxiety experiences began two years ago this month. The intervening years have been extremely busy. Now I have arrived in September, where the weather is similar to the anxious time, and I have time to contemplateand write. Not only that, but I am writing in similar ways to 2007. Last year I’d put writing down. Adding to the parallel, we are currently in a financially narrow spot, tight finances were a major component of the anxiety stress. Anniversaries and parallels are psychologically important even if we don’t recognize them consciously.
No wonder my brain burst and over flowed to spill my experiences on the page. I’m finally in an emotional and physical space where I am ready to process and accept what I went through. At the time it was all muddling-about with very little clarity about the experience. Writing about it is still not easy. I keep finding unexpected emotional triggers. I guess this mental clean up fits right in with all the household organization and clean up I’ve been doing. It is time to clear out the corners and get rid of old baggage.