Late November, my sophomore year of college I found myself at the student health clinic overcome with nausea. I was sure I had some horrible strain of the flu. I had been up the whole night suffering, and unable to sleep. The experience was excruciating. Something was terribly wrong with me, and the whole world was asleep.
"It's anxiety from finals," declared the doctor. "It'll pass."
Finals? I tried to explain to him I didn't HAVE any finals. As an English major, I had papers and projects. As an over-achiever, I had them all finished. I was gearing up to spend finals week like I always did while my friends in engineering slaved away-- watching the Lord of the Rings plus nine hours of appendices.
He shrugged his shoulders, snapped shut his clipboard and opened the door. "It's anxiety," he said again, and left.
Anxiety over what? My freshman year of college had been one of the best years of my life despite a difficult breakup and a ton of life changes. I came into my own intellectually, socially, and emotionally. Little had changed since then.
Except that now I suffered from bouts of insomnia, and carried a weight that wouldn't go away. I eventually beat the insomnia, and the weight eased, but I had lost some of my resiliency and became more sensitive to sensory input. Nine years later the noise generated by my two oldest boys was often physically painful. Almost daily, it left me incapable of accessing the parts of my brain that knew how to think rationally.
The day I started this detox that weight lifted. I'm still losing my patience with my kids, but I am also rebounding from it, finding ways to solve the problem, or just sighing and letting it go. I couldn't do that before. I couldn't stop the stress reaction. I could feel the chemicals flooding my system and I couldn't stop them. I could rise above them and fight through it sometimes, but at the end I was drained and miserable.
In the last few days, I've caught myself laughing more than I have in years.
Let's revisit my sophomore year of college shall we? The food I was eating was terrible-- low nutrient, highly processed, covered in breading. The salad bar was anemic, and veggies in general were scarce. Pop was readily available, as was dessert. And when the food was totally inedible, we ordered Pokey Sticks (a pizza dough/breadstick hybrid) and dipped them in ranch dressing which was probably pure MSG. Clearly I was an idiot, but I was an idiot with limited options.
Oh yes, and I turned 21 my junior year of college and added alcohol to the mix.
Compare that with the the environment I had grown up with. Pop was a rarity, dessert was limited. Veggies were fresh, and salads were green. My dad couldn't handle MSG or sodium so our food was minimally processed. He was also an excellent cook, and made everything from scratch. My mom made simple meals, which often meant few ingredients. Baked chicken breast anyone?
And though I was type A as a kid, I was also a free spirit. I stressed about things, but I was able to see the end and not lose sleep over it. I took enormous joy in small things. That person was still inside of me peering out, but she only surfaced occasionally.
I'm hoping to see a lot more of her from now on.
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