When I started writing on social media about my struggles with mental health, I told myself that I would share all sides of it. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the triumphs and the setbacks.
Last night was both beautiful and triumphant.
For the last several years, I have had pretty bad separation anxiety being away from Kyle Avery. I know people hear "separation anxiety" and think of babies or little kids, but it's not limited to that. You see, Kyle is my constant. He knows me better than anyone else. He knows what to do or say when I am struggling. We spend so many evenings and mornings talking about how I'm feeling and working through the process of overcoming these hurdles placed before us together. He has missed out on several opportunities in the last few years, because he knew I couldn't handle having him gone. But I've wanted to change this. I don't want us to live this way forever.
So we came up with some plans, some little baby steps we could take to overcome this huge hurdle.
One of our ideas was for him to sleep with Garrett in the backyard, so we could be apart but still very close. That ended up being swapped when Brooklyn wanted to camp with me in the backyard. Although we had to come in early because of the weather, I still felt an increase in confidence, because I fell asleep without having anxiety.
The next step was me staying in a local hotel with Brooklyn for a night. For a while, I've been pretty scared about doing this, but since I've been doing well for the last little while, we thought maybe it was time.
Yesterday, Kyle explained to Brooklyn why we were doing this and that it was okay if we needed to come home early. She understood, so we headed out. First, we swam in the hotel pool as a family, went out to eat for dinner, and then Brooklyn and I went back to the hotel while Kyle and Garrett went home. Brooklyn swam a little more, we watched a movie together while I crocheted, and then we read until we were tired and ready to sleep. We called Kyle to say goodnight and then Brooklyn wanted to snuggle my arm to fall asleep. I fell asleep quickly without any anxiety.
This morning, I woke up early (5:30am) as I often do. I was scared for weeks leading up to doing a hotel stay that waking up early would be terrifying without Kyle there in case I wasn't okay, but I ended up being fine with only a little bit of anxiety. I still prefer having Kyle there, morning breath and all 😉😂 but I was happy to not have any big anxiety.
When Brooklyn woke up, we got some hotel breakfast, packed up our things, walked across the street to look at a big Halloween display, and went home as planned.
This is HUGE!! I can't even explain how good it feels to know that I can do this, slowly and as I am ready. We still have lots more steps to take, but this one rewired a part of my brain to tell me that being away from Kyle doesn't have to cause great anxiety.
#Progress
#OvercomingFears
#GirlsNight
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