I’m a terrible bike rider

I am reading a book about anxiety. I’ve read a couple actually. I also can’t read them. I can skim them. They cause me too much anxiety for the person I’m reading about. I skim to what I hope is a reason or an answer to help. Or an unsolved mystery revealed in the end to cure my panic. It’s not there. I skim through their nightmare of medications, meditations, medicinal plants, various vitamin and minerals, coping strategies, therapies and realize, nothing.

Acceptance of who I am? Love who I am? Then I’m supposed to attract those who accept me. Thus allowing more acceptance of ones self? When? Am I just not there yet? I’m not looking for a fix to this chaotic thinking. I’m looking to know I’m not the only one who thinks it, or even better that most do. I write about this so often if feels like I’m afraid I’m alone. Or that I’m not. I’m both. I said thus.

I’ve tried medications to try and alleviate my anxiety. I can’t think on them. I felt like I was in a tunnel and everything was just beyond my reach. People were talking and I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t hear anything sometimes. At least when I’m not listening I can hear the chatter but this time I was trying so hard and just saw lips moving slow. Slurred speech. From me or slurred hearing? Maybe I’m the one talking slow, or am I hearing slow? Everyone’s arms even moved too slow. My eyes felt like they couldn’t go from one thing to the next. Like my brain had to play catch up to the movement of the eyes. I saw myself from outside and looked in and saw my eyes move but the image not. Writing about it feels like a dream. Like there is no way it could have happened. I lost so much during that time. I also gained myself back.

I fought medications too hard, my mind fought for control of itself, I complained and it was increased. Not once was I asked how I was responding to these medications. I seemed to be the one to say first I am fighting it too much, That might not even be true. I just don’t remember. I couldn’t store anything. I just know I would say, it’s not working, then the answer was, more. Thinking back, I was looking for someone to say I should be taken off. That I can’t be medicated. That I really crave the control of my mind. That I know it can be chaotic but not consuming. I had to find that out myself. Annoying, right? It’s a critical step in self love and acceptance. Learn who you are. Learn what you can handle. Learn what you can’t. Learn to self advocate. Learn to love the things you learn you love about you.

My sleep medicine was like I had died. That’s how sleep is to me anyway, when I actually sleep. I wake panicked that several hours are lost and I don’t know where anything or anyone is. I have to access quickly. But on medications I was there then I was not. Now when I sleep I can feel the torture of thoughts and little movements on the inside of my eyelids rocking me to sleep. I welcome the vivid dreams, I welcome the lack of them. The nights I wake and fall back asleep. I welcome waking and shaking off a feeling of something about birds??? Like a weird dream because it was. The kind of sleep where the brain rests. I think that’s odd. That a resting brain makes up such fun little stories then says, “sorry you don’t get to remember that no matter how hard you try, I had an adventure without you.” Wake up.

With sleep medications it was lights out, like I had been strangled quickly. Then, it gets worse. I walked around and did things with just vague memories of doing them. Cleaning with dangerous solutions, cooking with out cooking then eating raw chicken, cooking and not removing food from the stove, throwing up in the shower, walking around outdoors and waking to myself in a wood shed, make up on, clothes on and back in bed, all while trying to also manage my kids. I am lucky I’m still alive.

I have taken Xanax. Once I took it and was also on multiple other things, neck injections from a backhoe accident, anxiety meds, sleep meds, pain pills from my injury. I had also just had anesthesia from a little wrist injury and I was driving to get to a court date on time for my order of protection, for said wrist issue(whole other story) I was driving my daughter to daycare and swerved and hit a mailbox, which was always leaning way too far anyway. Then got to the daycare and passed out. I was out until I got to the hospital. Where an officer appeared to say something about a DUI and to sign here and what did I take? I blurted them all out. I listed all the drugs given like a grocery list. Once I was stopped by the doctor who protested my list by saying he didn’t show Xanax in my system. Well I took it I declared annoyed and stubborn!! My dad says ”stop talking” I was furious. I apparently metabolize some medications very quickly. Like Xanax. It’s not extremely helpful info to know about yourself. No one knows what it means. For me it means Benadryl=hyper and antsy. Mountain Dew=sleepy. I’m opposite. I have been told twice by surgeons how difficult I am to sedate. Once he said “like a big strong burly man!!”That I wake and move and toss around like a fish out of water. Is this a compliment? Can I use this on a dating profile? Does not sedate well? Will I attract an anesthesiologist as a challenge? Or attract drug users who will drug me to a point of no return?

I am the same with alcohol. I learned I am not an alcoholic. I was told to do classes for my DUI, so I sat with people who are. I made some amazing connections in this program. I still think of so many that I worried might not make it through. I sat and listened to the stories of so many people I wanted to help. That, was my problem right there. I wanted to help everyone in the room but me. It’s easier, right? I wanted everyone there to better their lives and wanted to be the one to show them how. I at one point started to think I had been forgotten. I didn’t get as many of the one on one as the others. Was I not as broken? Should I drink? My therapist there said, you girl are just not an alcoholic, you are a very strong willed woman, very curious, brilliant. She shocked me with this. I’m not complimented. Especially with brilliant. Was I? She said I had a high metabolism. That I should learn my boundaries, set them for myself and from others, that I had been through a lot and seemed to be looking for a way through, not out. You don’t want to check out, you want past it. I see that you don’t want to avoid or cover it you want to move forward and are stuck. Like the wheel stuck from the training wheels holding it back. That one wheel that can’t make contact with the ground. The wheel stuck in the little dip in the road and your peddling and you can’t get them all to move together. I have too many wheels? Take those fucking training wheels off and ride. She was confusing me with her bike story. Actually I was confusing me with her bike story. She basically said I was stuck. I created an entire story of training wheels. She said just take them off.

So, I bought a bike. Not just a bike, a mountain bike. I know that’s not what she really meant but I took it that way. I have battled more of my fears riding my bike through the woods than any other method of ”therapy”. I hadn’t ridden since I was a teenager. They say it’s just like riding a bike? Is riding a bike like riding bike too?

Do I remember? Do I remember riding no hands? Do I remember the training wheels? Did I ever have any? I think I remember tossing my bike down in frustration with the amount of wheels. But I’m likely recalling what I believe the memory would be based on what I know of who I am now.

Freely, with no hands? Balancing with what? I remember riding to places. I remember crashing while trying to also walk the dog we had. But not walking her, I was riding and her leash got tangled and I had it wrapped around the bars and I tumbled down. I remember crashing into the side of my school once. I crashed in lose gravel, dry and wet pavement, once trying to ride on the old railroad tracks. I remember crashing riding to my paper route. I’ve picked asphalt from my knees. I remember it falling over getting it out of the garage. I can’t seem to remember being on it a lot. I remember that Meg Ryan dies in City of Angels, maybe could have been avoided if she had worn a helmet? I’m not sure what she died of, maybe internal bleeding. It looked like a horrible crash. Although the story wouldn’t make sense if she survived. She learns to find a deeper meaning beyond herself, that as a surgeon who is she fighting against? She seems to find this then dies. Peacefully? Then forcing him to feel pain, which was love. A city of angels 2?? Just saying.

Am I good at riding? Nope. Do I give up? Nope. Do I love riding In the woods fast? Nope. I can’t do the things I do. I can’t see the things I need to see. I can hardly even do it. I can’t think or I fall. I have to think of every intentional movements to stay upright. Then I have to keep doing it to program a part of my brain to make it second nature. I have to fall to get back up. No one just stays on. I leave my bike rides bleeding, bruised, and exhausted. I’ve hit trees. Fallen off the edges of bridges. Braked hard while trying to go over something, making me catapult into my handle bars, I’ve fallen off the sides of ramps. I’ve braked in a panic on hills and then walked my bike back up. I hyper extend fingers. I have carried my bike through the woods too mad at it and unwilling to leave her. I’ve kicked my bike. I pushed it over the edge once. I yell at it. I’m a terrible bike rider. I’ve never broken any bones, knock on wood. But man it’s liberating. To let go and trust myself and my little busy mind.

I had no idea this would take me to my bike riding. It’s funny where your mind takes you when you let it. I haven’t really written about my medication issues in a very productive manner. I’m not certain it was very productive it just kind of flew out of my mind through my hands onto the keys to the screen to the world. Out of my mind. One more yarn untangled.