On Friday at kinder Albi ate a marigold seed, as one does when your 5. Unfortunately, however, the seed is now firmly stuck in his throat and we are now, 3 days later, sitting in emergency waiting to see a doctor to get it removed.
Fun way to spend a Monday morning..(at least I don’t have to do the washing today 🤣)
This morning when I woke up I was anxious. Edgy. Nervous. I know it was over nothing yet I couldn’t shake it. I guess the three years I spent with Renee in and out of hospitals has taken its toll on my nerves.
Driving in, the mood was the same as I remember; quiet and tense. And walking in to the ED slammed me with bad memories and that sickening anxious feeling of not knowing what was about to transpire.
I know this is a simple problem to sort out. I know there is nothing to worry about, but the smells, the sounds, the sights in an ED, even on a Monday morning in Byron Bay, are enough to shake me to the core.
It’s this anxiety about the unknown that is now an ever constant companion. I have discovered since Renee passed on that I struggle with making short term commitments. I have trouble with short term deadlines. My first reaction is deferment and denial. I say no as a first response.
Its like I need to come to a decision in my own time, not on the spot. And at the time it feels almost life and death in its intensity.
This of course is a throw back to my role as husband, father, carer and business owner during Renee’s fight with cancer. I simply could not agree to any time or date for anything unless it involved a doctors appointment. Such is life when you’re at the mercy of the western medical system and fucking cancer. #fuckcancer
I didn’t realise it at the time, but for 3 years I ran on adrenaline and my innate fight or flight response. Everything was purely reactionary and nothing was planned more than a day or two out.
As long as we all woke up in the morning I considered that a win.
Not that I was ever a long term planning kind of guy, but this state of being seems to be persisting in my life to this day. I have become, if it is possible to be any more so, the undisputed king of procrastination. Half started projects, semi finished works, hell; I’ve even employed an extension that allows me to snooze my email inbox!
Yet every now and then I get super pumped and create lists of all the crap that’s keeping me up at night, wake up every morning and start ticking that shit off. Which works and feels great. For a while anyway. You know how it works, kinda like going to the gym. Three weeks into your new fitness regime and you take a squiz in the mirror. “fuck I’m looking good!” you say to yourself, and then decide to skip today as a reward. Then somehow 6 months passed and you don’t know where it will went wrong… 😂
Anyway, I digress.
I think my problem lies in trying to break the shackles of living in survival mode. I need to change my mentality of trying to simply get through the day alive and in one piece to a mindset of growth and fulfilment.
I need to understand that although tomorrow is never a given, that shouldn’t stop me looking forward.
Make plans, accept offers, schedule some shit in apart from washing, cleaning and playing servant to my two little terrorists. Start those jobs and finish that work. Try to acknowledge that nothing bad is going to happen if I say yes instead of no.
Anxiety and procrastination are bitches. But not living a full life because of them is worse.
And perhaps the hardest lesson for me to learn is that moving forward is not moving on. Forward motion is not forgetting the past. It’s just life.
And mine’s not over yet.
✌️