I was naked and fresh out of the shower when the work texting started and the anxiety bloomed in my body like a bruise from an eighteen-wheeler collision. Boxing Day was starting in the ring and I’ll spare you the details of something that is all fine in the end, but a day after Christmas and I found myself lying still undressed on my bed immobile.
Sometimes anticipation makes you shake — or maybe it was doubt or anger or whatever it was it didn’t just rest in my chest but made my limbs heavy so I closed my eyes and waited it out.
And I hope for you, I really do, that you have what I had when these waves come: a big, heavy, loving, lap cat who will come rest on top of your chest and bump your nose with his and wait out the whole episode with you.
I’ve called Merlin my anxiety blanket before, but he is. He really is.
I was well past needing to know when I found out about the pangs anxiety puts in your chest — I thought it was metaphor, not real physical pain, but it is, it is — as well as being told by my friend about the soothing weight (a blanket, a body, your own fist) that will help treat it in the moment.
But I know all these things now and I was blessed with a slow after-Christmas morning to sit through it and a cat to help me and — to be clear to any concerned parties — it all turned out fine.
If you even have those pains in your chest find a weight to sooth it, or better yet, a big tomcat.
With Love,
Natalie