Editor’s note: I always want my posts to come with a learning rather than be a vent session, so I laid low for a while to be a student to life, learn some of the lessons in private and come back with advice – I hope this helps anyone out there who may be dealing with the same.
After living abroad for a year where we: drove THOUSANDS of miles in our van, rental cars and busses, boarded 12 different flights and visited 6 insanely different (and beautiful) countries, I came back to New York a totally changed person. My mentality changed. My pace of life changed. But New York? It was the same. And that was the start of it.
Bright. Plentiful. Stars are just everywhere. Unfortunately, growing up in New York City meant that I really didn’t get to see all the stars that exist in our night sky. The highest I ever counted was about nine from my dining room window, though I am pretty sure that five of those ‘stars’ were actually airplanes because stars don’t usually blink red and white right near John F. Kennedy Airport, right? No, no they don’t.
Yay! I am so happy to finally get the chance to sit and write! It’s been too long, Internet, too long.
So, here’s the scoop: I have been taking yoga teacher training classes Saturday’s and Sunday’s for the past 5 weeks and it has been amazing. I am not finished just yet, but the incredible self-observing journey this has taken me on is one that I am grateful for. I, too, am eager about what this all means at the end of it! I cannot yet generalize my whole experience since I am not a time traveler and have, well, not experienced it all, but I want to share with you my journey thus far.
I don’t know whether to say that my life at the current moment is crazy good or crazy bad; therefore, I will just label it ‘crazy’! Having a full-time corporate job, finding a new apartment, packing, starting to move, going to yoga on the weekends for 14 hours and then yoga during the week for at least 6 hours (total of at least 20 hours a week, if you’re keeping track!), attending family events, attending friend events, being a wife, and finding time to just breathe (*breathes*) has been a little… crazy! You’d think that yoga was relaxing (it is!), but this teacher training is definitely isn’t; it’s quite intensive and like a part-time job! So I guess I’ve been, for the past month, been working 1 full-time and 1 half-time job- mamma mia! But. all. worth. it.
My Experience:
Rather than me go on about how each week was and go off on a tangent, I want to share with you my entries in my journal that I have been keeping (don’t worry, they are short and to the point!). But just see how crazy of a roller coaster ride this is (I was surprised!):
I can’t believe it has been one year!
I must say, when I think of ‘365 days’ it seems quite overwhelming; but, the beauty is that I didn’t think like that while getting to this point, I honestly took it one day at a time. And here I find myself, one year later, better.
The past year has definitely been a work in progress. And while I am not 100% yet, I feel so much better than I did back when it first happened. There were struggles, yes, but they were all tests of how far I have come and grown. The beauty of it all was that I learned to control my anxiety so that if I felt an attack come on, I could just calm myself and nip it in the bud.
One of my hardest times dealing with anxiety during the past year, I must admit, was last week.
Being Your Own Worst Enemy
To be honest, I have been living anxiety-free for a couple of weeks, actually, and it wasn’t until last week, when I realized that my ‘one year’ was coming up, that I started to panic. I kept thinking believing that the attack was going to anniversary itself. It was as if the world was going to end and I, only I, knew it. It just built this giant fear inside of me and I knew I was being overtaken by it.
While on my way home last Thursday, I almost lost it on the train again. My mentality and way of thinking was “This is too good to be true, I have been able to fight the anxiety for almost a year and it is just going to come back and slap me in the face, I know it.” So, naturally, thinking like this had me a bit paranoid for the whole week because I was just waiting for it to happen. It was as if I wanted it to be a one-year anniversary. But that was the thing: why was I waiting for it again? Why was I putting myself in this prison that it will happen again? Because if we think like that then, chances are, you will find yourself making it happen… again.
