Two Days into the Countdown

Tonight I am assailed with doubt again. Feeling like I don't want to leave, feeling like moving is a huge mistake. I am again just barely functioning. I can pack if there's someone there to help me or point me in the right direction, but in general I feel too overwhelmed to do much. Why can't I just move forward and be done with it? Why can't I turn my thoughts toward all the advantages and ignore everything else? Instead I feel on the verge of implosion.

Today my mom helped me pack and as I was trying to express why this move is so hard for me (after all, I have actually lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere in my entire life -- thanks a lot mom and dad) she began talking about medication and chronic depression and things of that nature, which then made me think, okay, how far out of scale is the way I'm feeling? Isn't it only natural to feel sad and fearful? I tried to explain how important my surroundings are, how critical to my state of mind, and I don't think I made much of an impression. Everyone in my family knows I'm the picky one...I guess they don't understand how deeply that pickiness (read control issues, kids) goes.

Am I crazy? I mean in the treatable sense? Am I chronically depressed? I'm not really sure. It certainly doesn't feel at all like the depression I had after Grant was born. I felt so sad and so full of despair then, like nothing in the world really mattered at all. This is more like a low level panic attack, a kind of thin thread of anxiety running through my every waking moment and through a good chunk of my sleeping moments, too. I think I am anticipating loss (old house) and constant unrelenting work (new house) and that's all my tunnel vision can grasp.

Change is so hard for me. I have never adapted well to change, even as a kid. I think it was just less obvious then because I had so little say in what decisions were made for me. In particular, I never had the right of refusal. Now, as a grown up, I know I sometimes say no just to say it -- I sometimes say no to quite good ideas, just to enjoy the feeling of putting my foot down. Then later I think, what the heck? That would have been okay!

Then, too, grieving is not something I do easily. Emotionally speaking I am fairly private and grief, although I feel it keenly, is the most private of all. And what I am feeling a lot of lately is grief.

D-day in 2 days.