Back in 2011 I blogged about my greatest fear (wow, I was already living in this house and it was also December!) and then revisited that idea/post in March 2015 when my husband's cousin's wife had a very scary brush with death.
Well... I guess my greatest fear has changed now that my sons are older and it has reverted back to what it was before I became a mother. If I die now, my sons will not only have lots of memories of me and our relationship, but they are older and while that would still be awful, they don't need me as much anymore (well, they do, but I don't feel so scared and helpless with the thought of leaving them behind).
My greatest fear has always been losing my mind, having a mental breakdown, going crazy. Whatever you wanna call it. My dad's family immediate has a history of mental-health issues. His youngest brother was schizophrenic (I pretty much told his life in my post about my "three uncles" a couple years ago) and his sisters are pretty troubled (bipolar, probably? and we don't know what the other one has).
The fact that I am not neuro-typical by having ADHD doesn't help my fear and there's something I've experienced since I was 16, which I never discussed with a mental health professional (not that I've seen one for long anyway and I was unhappy with him) -- I experience these "dream attacks" that I guess one could call "panic attacks," but not so serious (I haven't researched much about panic attacks either). I can write a post about that, exploring how and when it started (it's an interesting story) but the experience is just brief moments of feeling that I'm "living inside" my own previous dream and it's very unsettling. It's happened often enough in my life that I'm capable of weathering and brushing it off much more than I could do when I was 16.
Anyway, in days like today, when I'm extremely stressed out by all the things I desperately need to do and don't have enough time: FINISH GRADING, it TAKES FOREVER!, The Xmas Cards have been printed and ready to go for THREE WEEKS and I haven't mailed them :-( , the house is filthy and needs cleaning, guests arrive on Sunday evening and the house needs cleaning and I need to plan food for guests while K and I go on our anniversary getaway for two nights. OH, and there's laundry to be done! (but I wish I could line dry it, but it's too cold!!) Sigh...
Yeah, not a recipe for a good place mental-health wise. Sigh...
Well, even though nobody is reading I needed the free therapy of blogging this morning to help me cope with the busy-ness. And I will constantly be praying that I won't ever lose my mind. That I will find good professionals to help me so it can be avoided. HOPEFULLY!!
P.S. it doesn't help that this presidency/regime is angering and stressing me out so much! I have a blog post in the drafts folder about the CHIP program, in addition to the net-neutrality worries.
That sounds really scary. I've never had a full-on panic attack, but this fall I've had an advisee who's been having them at an increasing rate, and it's been disturbing to see. Does your health insurance cover mental health, such that you could talk with a therapist about this? Sometimes knowledge is power, and it might help to learn more about what these "dream attacks" might be.
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