For Me, a Miracle.
The strongest attack in ten years, two days of fog – and the sentence underneath it all, sometimes I think I didn't deserve this.
A panic attack on the train – the strongest in ten years – then two days of fear and no strength, then the same trip again with the anxiety already waiting in the morning. When Fear Returns is written for exactly this visit: perhaps you believed you had moved past it, and here it is again, as if nothing had changed. But something has changed – she gathers herself and rides on.
The center of the post, though, isn't the attack. It's the sentence to me it's a miracle – being met with care, and hearing an old reflex answer that she hasn't earned it. She doesn't dress the reflex up as humility; she names it as work still open and stays on the way. That is ground this site keeps under everything: you are enough was never a wage for finished work.
She closes with the old vow – in sickness and in health – and for once the formula sounds lived-in rather than borrowed.
I've told you before that I used to have panic attacks. Well, this week I had a severe attack on the train to Zürich. I hadn't had one that strong in 10 years. I grabbed the stroller, jumped off the train, and in a panic wanted to call my husband and ask him to come get me. But then I pulled myself together and made it there after all. I'll tell you about that in more detail a bit later – right now I want to share something else.
For about 2 days after that situation I was in a strange state of fear, apathy, no strength. And today I was supposed to go to Zürich again, for a walk with a friend, and from the very morning the anxiety wouldn't leave me. And my husband offered to ride with me. He said, if it would make me calmer, he could ride with me to Zürich and go back.
Maybe for most people that's a normal situation. For me it's a miracle. I'm not used to a man being able to treat his woman like that. Every time I'm amazed at what a calm, sensitive, caring husband I have. I often ask myself what he's even doing with me; sometimes I think I didn't deserve such a man. Which, of course, absolutely needs working through – and I'm on the way 😉
Still, years of working on myself, changing my views and my goals, a bad example and painful experience led me to my husband. And I'm ready to choose him again and again. I don't need anyone else; I thank the universe for our meeting.
And I wish everyone to meet their other half, who will be with you, as they say, in sickness and in health 🩷
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan