Five years  ago this morning she was here.  Barley.  Not really.  I think by then she was probably more than half way between here and there.  I think she’d been there for a while.  She hadn’t been lucent in so long.  A gift, I guess.

I didn’t say goodbye.  Not in so many words.  I couldn’t.  “I’ll see you next week” I’d say as I kissed her goodbye.  I didn’t want to utter the words.  I didn’t want her subconscious to hear them.  I didn’t want her to hold on any longer, halfway between here and the hereafter in the broken shell that was my Mother, but I didn’t have enough strength to tell her goodbye.  I didn’t want her to misinterpret me.  I wanted her to stay forever and I struggled with guilt over the selfish greed of wanting her to stay and the horror of knowing that I didn’t want her to live for one more second like she was at the end.

Five years letter, I’m not better, really.  I’m different.  I’ll never be again the girl I was on May 4, 2007.  She disappeared with my Mom. The loss of her is a scar.  Sometimes it flares up and I’m sad or angry or bitter or confused.  Those flare ups don’t happen as frequently but they’ll never be gone. Things will always wash over me and the missing her will hurt again like it did at the beginning.

Cancer can’t do a lot of things.  There’s a meme that floats around the Internet that says so.  But the one thing it did do was cause my dormant anxiety to rear it’s ugly heard and five years after the cancer has left, the anxiety has stayed. I’m afraid of doing everything right and leaving my girls and Big Daddy alone.  I’m afraid of making one small misstep and leaving them alone.  It’s the worst thing I can imagine, after all, to leave before we’re ready.  It was something my Mom was afraid of and somehow the decade old conversation I had with her where she admitted it has buried into my psyche and it manifests in me.  That’s something cancer has done.  Of course, I don’t want it to win in that way but, for now, only five years later it still is.  Whispering in my ear that nothing is forever and that we have no control over the amount of time we have.

Yesterday morning, Baby Bee and I prepared to leave the house.  We stepped out the front door and a butterfly was hovering in front of us.  It flitted with great joy around us, buzzing so close to us that I was sure it would fly in the house (and risk becoming the prey of Angus and Luna).  Baby Bee was frightened of it at first, but when I told it was only a butterfly she trotted onto the porch and chased it and spun and laughed.  Playing with it a few moments before it fluttered away.  I’m confused about the hereafter and what there is after this but my heavy heart wants to believe  desperately that a part of my Mom and Baby Bee got to have a few moments of the playtime they’d have surely had if my Mom had survived cancer.

It’s not all well with my soul, but it’s okay.

Well, except that I’d call it pop, but I couldn’t think of a witty title that included the word pop, so I went with soda.

I have anxiety.  I also chronically over breath.  Both of those things can cause heart palpitations.   Heart palpitations, while not abnormal nor dangerous can really make anxious people more anxious.  Anxious people are awesome like that, but there’s one more thing that causes me to have heart palpitations.

Pop.

Soda.

Coke.

Pepsi.

It matters not what brand so long as it’s caffeinated.

Small turtles will not save you from soda palpitations

See, at first I thought it was just over consuming caffeine in general that caused the palpitations.  I’d allow myself never to have more than one cup of coffee in a day.  I’d partner that with some pop, usually (I tried to limit it to a can, but no more than a 20 oz bottle).  If I “over consumed” meaning, usually, a cup of coffee and a 20 oz bottle of pop, I’d have heart palpitations the next day.  I figured it was just caffiene amounts in general.

But, for the last two weeks I’d gone without pop and a few days?  I drank two cups of coffee.  No palpitations.

Sunday, I drank a bottle of Pepsi.  Sweet, sweet Pepsi.  That night?  The next day?  You guessed it.  Heart palpitations.  No coffee was consumed Sunday.  Just that pop.  I realized what I had already guessed.  Something about the caffeine in pop gives me heart palpitations and heart palpitations give me anxiety.  Pepsi has less caffiene, overall, than the espresso I drink every day (and I don’t drink a shot.  I drink a mug), but something about the caffiene in pop affects me differently and the only choice is to cut it out.  Totally.  Because, I’m trying not to be crazy.

It’s messy.

So, so messy.

And the Princess made her lunch this morning and managed to soak the bagels with some undetermined substance that is probably chicken soup, but might not be, so I sigh as I throw the bagel into the garbage can.

Did I mention that someone got into the garbage?  Leftover hamburger fixings, frozen vegetable packages and coffee grounds lay strewn upon the kitchen floor.  Littlebit squats down, prepared to  finger paint in the grounds.  I ask her to please not do that and the desperation in my voice must have been obvious, so she stopped.

Two months ago, I stopped taking my meds.  Mild meds. Meds to control my anxiety which is NOT mild at all.  Mild meds to control my panic attacks, which aren’t mild at all.  The payoff is so big, but I didn’t want to be medicated to “cope” with my life.  I didn’t want to be medicated to be able to tell the irrational Boogie Men Panic and Anxiety that they didn’t need to be here anymore.  So, at Thanksgiving I forgot to take them for a few days and then I realized I felt fine without them. Maybe even better.  I was so proud of myself.

But, as stress begins to mount from our upcoming changes (we’re moving out of state, ya’ll) and my irrational terror of making a wrong choice and the Boogie Men are hiding under the bed and in the closets again.  I try ignoring them.  I tell them to go away.  I try begging, pleading, bargaining, cajoling, shaming and ordering them away.  It doesn’t work.

Sunday night in the midst of another minor crisis my first full blown attack in some time happened when I was home alone with the girls.  My Princess, my sweet, sweet Princess, who has lived through the worst of panic took control of the little people while I fought the attack back.  It’s not real, I told myself over and over. It’s not real.  The attack passed and left me shaky.  For two whole days, like panic does.

Tuesday night before bed, I took out my bottle of mild meds and, with sadness, swallowed a pill.  I woke up Wednesday  morning feeling better.  Panic and Anxiety are standing in the corner with their arms crossed.  They’re irritated.  They had such a good run here last time.  They can’t believe the curtain is already falling.

What does this have to do with my nightmare of a kitchen?  When my panic is bad, I have one option to control it.  Constant mental focus elsewhere.  I have to play games, do multiplication tables, focus mentally (reading doesn’t usually help, nor does watching t.v. or movies for that matter).  Word games and math games are my only defense against a full blown, horrible attack.  That means that the dishes and laundry fall to the wayside as there isn’t enough mental activity involved in those tasks to keep me focused away from my mounting panic.

It means we eat out more and the vacuum cleaner isn’t run.It means I cry to Big Daddy over my inability to just cope with it on my own and enjoy my wonderful life.  It means I live in constant fear of the worst happening.  I am paralyzed.

So I take my mild meds.  I wait for the symptoms to ebb.  I hope.  I banish the boogie men, who depart reluctantly.  Hopefully never to return