Legends of Windemere

I’m going to start with the stuff that doesn’t connect to the title.  Just an overview of the week to get to the big reveal that will take a long time to get over.  I started writing War of Nytefall: Lost and got through the first 4 chapters, which isn’t bad considering everything else going on. I had trouble when the prologue looked like more of a chapter one, but Clyde didn’t appear.  Reworked the other chapter one to make the prologue more like it’s supposed to be.  I’m noticing that this is going to be a slower paced book because the plot revolves around figuring out a mystery instead of battling.  I’m hoping to work a bit more this weekend to get ahead since I promised the next few nights to wife time.  We have more space in the house for a bit, so we’re taking advantage.  Mostly, we’re getting into the Netflix TV to watch the live-action Full-Metal Alchemist movie and the Castlevania series.  I cooked, cleaned, and run errands alongside the big event:

My son is doing a report on Pangolins . . . Yes, but that’s not it.

For a long time now, I’ve been having days where it feels like my muscles are tense and my chest is being gently squeezed.  Pushing through these moments would result in exhaustion and dizziness, so I’ve given up the days to resting.  Most times, this would strike me at night until about a month ago.  It started happening more often during the day and I couldn’t figure out why.  Even began to feel feverish a few times.  Oddly enough, I would feel better if I ate or was distracted by something.  Never happened during my son’s Winter Spring too.  Still, the sensation had me pulling this maneuver, especially at night when I wasn’t sure what was going on:

Sanford and Son

Thoughts of a heart attack, hypertension, stroke, and aneurysm ran through my head to the point where I feared falling asleep might I was finished.  This started dragging my mind into thoughts of death and a fear of it being like I would turn off instead of any part of me continuing on.  The idea of my consciousness falling into a void while the world keeps spinning actually scares me more than the method of how I die.  I’m getting off-topic here, but I will say that I began noticing things that made me doubt those previously mentioned possibilities.

These fits would disappear whenever I was eating, entranced by my writing, reading, or doing anything relaxing.  I’d wake up fine too, but watching the news or getting into a debate with the wife would shove me down.  One night, I was still up at 1 am feeling like my chest had something sitting on it.  This came out as one of the worst ones and I didn’t want to wake the wife because we’d been arguing earlier about something.  I put the local weather channel on with no sound and went web-surfing while chatting with a friend who happened to be awake.  The effects began to fade enough that I started remembering how I was perfectly fine on Tuesday.  In fact, Tuesday was a great day from beginning to end with no stress . . . Then, I remembered a time in college I got stressed to the point where I was bedridden in my girlfriend’s (now wife) room.  I recovered once and then collapsed again as soon as I tried to study for a test.  It was like I was at the edge of a cliff and kept slipping, but always had a finger to lift myself back up.  I went looking for my symptoms on-line, which I know is a bad thing and I came up with the following:

Anxiety attacks

I know it isn’t an official diagnosis because I didn’t go to a professional, but I had most of the symptom list.  Heck, I was perfectly fine at the beginning of this post and now I have that chest tightness and breathing issues.  Feel a little hot too.  Honestly, the death mention up above is where I really felt it coming on.  Anyway, that’s what it seems to be and I’m realizing how often this sensation has been hitting me.  Probably just over a year if not longer and I didn’t do anything about it.  Just let the stress and pressure continue piling on as if I was Atlas holding up the planet.  Now, it doesn’t take much to kick me over the edge.  The strangest thing here is that my thoughts don’t feel anxious to me, but I’m wondering if I simply can’t recognize it.  Almost like I’ve lived in a constant state of stress for so long that the panicky thoughts have become my norm.

I’m determined not to let this stop me from writing since I’ve found that letting my ideas take me away helps ease the anxiety.  Strange even saying that because I feel like I’m overreacting or that this has to be something else.  Not that I have this belief that I’m too strong to get anxious.  It’s just that I have this weird denial in my head as if better people than me have this, so it has to be something else.  This might stem from always being told that my problems aren’t nearly as bad as I think.  You keep telling a person that there are others worse off then they could start believing that they shouldn’t complain about anything and possibly even ignore their own problems.  I’m getting into a much more philosophical/psychological chat than I expected here.  Geez, it really is like I’m being hugged around the chest by a python.

Right now, I’m doing breathing exercises and stepping back whenever I feel like I need to take a break.  I tried chamomile tea, but I’m finding that I don’t like the taste.  Read that almonds can help, so I have some of those.  Not really sure about the science on this one, but I like them.  Not as much as cashews though.

I had more, but this post has already gotten pretty long.  Goals for the week are fairly simplistic:

1. Test blurbs for War of Nytefall: Loyalty tomorrow.  (Reblog and shares will be down until Monday.  Hope people are able to give some insight.)
2. Continue writing War of Nytefall: Lost.
3. Help my son finish his Pangolin report.
4. Watch Castlevania and Full Metal Alchemist.
5. Try to relax.

Beyond that, I found this and I’m wondering if this is true for me.  Maybe I have pushed myself too hard for too long.

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