Today I noticed… anxiety. After I finished lunch, and while my fifteen year old was making his lunch (having just woken up for the day…. After first waking up to have breakfast and then going back to sleep until after noon) I noticed a tightening in the front of my throat. I began to freak out. How could I be allergic to my lunch? Eggs, toast, butter, and tomatoes. I’ve had that numerous times. What does Aldi put in their butter? I quickly googled tightness in the throat. Anxiety. Anxiety was the diagnosis from doctor google. Anaphylactic shock does not set in with a tightening of the throat. So, I wasn’t going to die. But, anxiety? Not what I wanted to read. I’m not a very anxious person. But, apparently I am.
A real estate agent arrived after I talked myself down from the ledge. With the tap at the door I promptly forgot about the tightening of my throat and my potential suffocation. All I could do was wonder who it was. “The Real Estate Agent.” My fifteen year old said But, she wasn’t coming until 6. Ha! Jokes on me. She was coming just after lunch on the sixth. Talk about a huge miscalculation. Our house lay in ruins and here was someone coming to evaluate the value of our property.
It is an interesting experience walking around our home, noticing the filth and the clutter. Feeling like I should be feeling shame, but knowing that in five hours none of this was going to be here. That my week of solo parenting, that our months of frantic house-fixing, that our years of chaos were going to be swept away in a very hectic cleaning spree of epic proportions. Or was it? It’s not easy to tell how that was going to work out. I’ve been decluttering for years and yet when I look around I feel despair at all that remains to do. At all the stuff that we have. At all of the things that four children manage to accumulate and ruin.
Huh. I’m not sure it’s any wonder that I felt anxiety. I wonder that I don’t always feel as though I am suffocating under an invisible hand.