It’s crazy that no matter how many times my anxiety tells me I can’t, I do.
When the anxiety tries to tell me that I’ll never tackle this behavior issue or get that kid potty trained. I do.
When the minutes feel more like hours because of all the obsessive thoughts and negative self-talk running on spin cycle in my brain. Those times when I feel I’m wasting the day away and not getting anything accomplished. But then I make it to that morning yoga class and pick up that fruit bowl for the work potluck.
I take my kids to the park and they fight and we come home. But hey, we went to the park.
My anxiety screams at me at the end of the day that I’m not cut out for parenthood. That I can’t take another second of the shrieking kids. But somehow, I do. My husband and I get them to bed. And the next days seems more bearable through the lens of a good Netflix show or 5.
All those pictures on our phones of trips to the zoo and happy family dinners aren’t lies, even if they don’t show the spilled milk and the worries swimming in our heads. They are snapshots of the triumphant way we carry on, living life even when anxiety or depression or obsessive compulsive disorder tells us to go curl up in a ball and let life devour us whole.
Samantha Scroggin, Walking Outside in Slippers 