I Caught the Vid (again)

I’m just going to start with the strain of covid that I got this time is either very mild or being vaccinated is the best choice I have ever made because I almost didn’t notice I had it. I have never received a test result and been so baffled with the result the way that I was with my covid test this morning. I haven’t been keeping up to date on my blog posts recently as I have felt like I was not qualified to be giving out advice about other peoples lives when I was struggling so much within my own life. I went through a tough period of time with a family emergency and in due time I will share that story, as of right now I plan to keep it to myself for the privacy of my family. We had a tough run the last couple months and even now I get the occasional whiff of struggle from my family members. Life is fucking hard sometimes y’all and trying to see the people you love most cope with something you’re also struggling with breaks your damn heart. Not to sound all doom and gloom because realistically the last week and a half have been better than the last 3 months combined. There’s still currently shit hitting the fan, nothing that hasn't happened before, and honestly because of my “new life” in metro Detroit the shit seems less shitty this time around. I am confident in myself and when I feel helpless that’s when I don’t feel it. I allow myself to feel helpless and within the last couple months I was unable to help myself because I believed the situation at hand could not be solved. It couldn’t. That wasn’t the point of the situation. The point was supposed to get me up and moving and I refused which resulted in the situation I am in now. Not the covid, but that sucks too. In all honesty if I hadn’t moved to a new area within the last couple weeks I’m really not sure I would feel so confident about everything working out right now. That and it took meeting new people to understand when I speak people listen, and that can get lost when your friends are used to the things you say. I said nothing I wouldn’t say to one of my friends and I silenced an entire room for them to hear me talk about something. I’ve been told a million times I’m before my time and every time I hear it, I have to explain why. I pulled myself out of places that I nobody else ever believed that I could. I learned to shut up when necessary and to speak up for myself. I learned to put myself first although sometimes I think this is also where I fall short when life gets tough. I have had a habit of letting other people control my fate when my life is hard because I don’t want to have control of what happens. When I do this, it also releases anxiety within me. Since around November of 2020 I have had issues with health anxiety and I’m not talking like I think I have cancer I mean I have had panic attacks thinking my body is shutting down. Explaining this is so complicated to people because when I logically talk about it I sound sane and level headed about it. When it’s actually happening trying to convince myself I am not going to have a heart attack or pass out at the gym seems utterly impossible. I have learned within the last couple days that certain things trigger certain parts of my body that in turn results into anxiety about that. Vaping causes me to have anxiety about my lungs failing (rightfully so), the gym causes anxiety about my heart failing (from beating too hard), and my best friend causes my stomach to hurt because I’m anxious about not being able to control circumstances involving him. All of these things have given me anxiety about my body that creates the space for me to feel panic. I have been driving to work where I have to roll the windows down because I got a sudden feeling of panic within my chest that made my heart race for no reason. I was connecting it all to stomach issues but recently I have been eating cleaner and still notice the anxiety come and go. Its real interesting to talk about because I hadn’t heard of anyone else experiencing it until I did. Trying to explain to someone that I feel like my heart is going to fail me makes no sense but in my head is a very real fear. All of these fears only developed when I started to care what happened to me. When I started to notice the beat of my heart and the shallowness of my breath when I’m going to sleep. Things I used to observe for fun now come with a price when I choose to pay attention. Working through this has been the most difficult challenge I have had to face in this life thus far because I can’t run away from it. It comes from within my mind and from within my body, where sometimes is no longer a safe space for me. I will persevere through this as I have many other things and I will come out stronger because of it. Having covid has not made this any easier as an upper respiratory infection includes half of the things I mentioned that cause anxiety within my body. I will persevere and I will be bigger than this, the more I learn the better I will get.