Time for some thoughts

If you put the words ‘anxiety’ and ‘claustrophobia’ into a bag and shook them up until they blended together, you’d get a pretty good idea of where I’m at mentally right now. My life is not my own. Everyone wants something from me. Everyone has an agenda for me to follow, or a need they want me to fill, or a demand, or an expectation. I’m in up to the roots of my hair, and I’m drowning.

It’s not that any one thing is overly stressful or demanding, but the culmination of them all is starting to overwhelm me. My obligations— some are essential, necessary, and good (like motherhood and church callings), some I do only because “that’s what I should be doing.”— are starting to feel like a noose around my neck, slowly but surely getting tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe. It makes me panic. And my reaction to panic is anger. Maybe that’s the fight in me, but instead of shutting down, I feel a hostile energy boiling up inside of me. I am a bull about to charge. A bomb waiting to go off. A volcano about to erupt.

More and more frequently I’m feeling apprehension caused by situations that seem to limit and restrict me. I’m tired of feeling obligated, manipulated, taken advantage of, and pushed around by the environment outside of my home. I resent being told what I’m going to do, and when and how I’m going to do it. I am an independent and capable person.  I insist on having the space and freedom to choose what I feel is most important, for myself and for my family.  It’s time to start asserting myself.

The trouble is, I know I need to establish some boundaries, but I don’t know how to go about it without burning bridges, stepping on toes, hurting feelings, etc., etc.

Right now, today, if I were given the opportunity to take my husband, children, house, yard, and a few close friends and move across the country, I would accept. It sounds marvelous to be in a place where no one knows us, where Aaron and I could rely on each other and our own agenda to occupy our time and our thoughts. 


...I was going to end there, but as an afterthought I should probably add that I like to be busy. Well, maybe busy is the wrong term. I like to go and do and get things accomplished. That is not what I'm talking about above. The solution to this is not to stop doing everything and stay home all day. That would kill me off. My problem is that I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything, because I'm too busy with the things everyone else wants from me. And because I do those things, I am not doing meaningful things. I hope that clarifies.