In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. –Albert Camus

It starts within seconds of my waking up.

There is the initial stirring, the feeling of being warm and protected, and then it shifts. My consciousness peaks, and the load lowers: the weight of the day, week, month ahead, coming to rest squarely on my shoulders, heavy yet raising them to my neck. My muscles tense–the tension always comes with it, this tightening I’ve only recently learned to become aware of, to attend to, to intentionally release. Lower the shoulders; open the palms; breathe.

This is anxiety.

For so much of my life I’ve felt alone, yet this companion has always been constant. Now, I’m not alone in any way, the prayers of my youth answered in the form of a man and two boys, at least one of whom is typically beside me when I wake up, this forever sharing of space. And this, this wonderful blessing, it also can undo me, this coming to the surface struggling to breathe with a foot in my belly or hands on my legs, my body no longer my own, and there is the focused reinterpretation of it: not as violence, but as love. This sounds crazy to some people.

All of this will sound crazy to some people. Buckle up.

Adrenaline powers me out of bed, a list of tasks already forming in my mind: make the bed. Make breakfast. Clean breakfast. Vacuum the floor from breakfast. What if there’s traffic?! Make lunches. Pack backpacks. What if other kids are mean to them?! Get three people dressed. Lay out their clothes for tomorrow. Get everyone everywhere on time. What if we’re late?! It all arrives at once, along with some attendant fears thrown in for fun. This is how anxiety works.

Breathe.

Some of the tasks sound unnecessary: why not just cross a few out? Who needs a made bed, after all?

I do. I need the made beds, the wiped counters, the clean floors. I need the toys put away and the shoes lined up. I need the order because it smacks away at the anxiety. Simply put, it makes me feel better. I need straight lines and uncluttered surfaces and I see this need in The Kid and I don’t always receive it, living with others. More anxiety. Breathe again.

There are things that help, besides the order. There is classical music. Prayer and meditation. Exercise. Time alone, oh blessed time alone. (“Is there anything better than time alone in your own house?” The Sis wondered recently. “It’s like therapy.” She is an ally.) There is the beach, two minutes away and a gift I still can’t believe to be our daily reality. There are water views in between beach visits. There is medication. There is wine–but not too much wine (this is tricky).

There is grace. There are the unexpected reminders that, contrary to what anxiety tells me, everything does not hinge upon my orchestrations, my performance. There is the car that backs out of its driveway three seconds after TK has already run past, mere feet ahead of me and under my watchful eye yet–I am reminded–ultimately protected by someone else. There is Little Brother, safely clinging to the side of the pool and bringing himself back to more shallow water as I watch, breath bated and heart stopped, knowing this is how he will learn yet hating it all the same. There is running into a friend and her girls one morning when we take the back entrance to school, walking and talking together, my self-imposed rush slowing down. There is the manic joy of TK’s morning time before the bell, the smiles he brings to people’s faces. There is the self-aware goofiness of Little Brother that he knows will make me laugh–and it does. There is the way The Husband bends to my craziness because he knows it will help–the handheld vacuum now part of his routine too.

All my life, I’ve had this companion, this anxiety that I thought was something everyone dealt with, but now I realise it is the other, the extra, the thing that doesn’t belong but is here anyway and not likely to disappear. So, yes, there are strategies, but there is also this:

I don’t know that I want it to disappear. Because it is part of me now, for better and worse. And if there is this companion that has never left, somehow that is what makes it easier to believe in another companion that never leaves, in a mystical balance that grace provides. In the moments at the beach that I feel forced to fill, to produce–how can I put this into words?!–as an unheard but felt voice tells me to just be. That in this place, staring at this water, warmed by this sun, is where I am allowed to let go and just be.

Know this, when you see me, when you see any of us who are afflicted and accompanied: we are constantly doing battle.

But there is this: that somehow it makes my life richer. There is TK, demanding the way we took yesterday, the back way into school that leads us to our friends, the long way. Yes, I prayed for this, and I also prayed for patience, and I saw Evan Almighty too, and I learned that we are given situations that make us patient, but the scooter he had to ride to school is now swinging around, tripping me up as he drags it, and I’d like to change my request for patience into one for a bottle of wine and a desert island. Maybe some Xanax on the side wouldn’t hurt either. But we walk together, and I see that the long way, though it can feel crushing, is filled with more: more scenery. More “chance” encounters. More moments together. More talking, and more quiet.

And I know that this God-forsaken anxiety, this long way home, it is not God-forsaken. It is somehow given, and it is where I am met. It is how, and where, I am taught to breathe.