Today is just another day. I wake up every morning with stomach cramps, usually ones that send me running to bathroom, tired and squinty-eyed, I hope it will just be one and done. The ache that follows is usually always present. Nothing seems to offer me relief so I somehow manage to deal with it. My 2 year old is usually my alarm clock. He wakes up anywhere between 6 and 7. Wishful thinking doesn’t seem to get me too far in terms of him sleeping later, so I just assume the worst, as I do in almost every aspect of my life. Any parent would be thrilled to have their young child sleep from 9:00 until 6:30, but for me, even though that is the norm, I still worry constantly that I will wake up to a crib full of vomit, so as you can imagine, I don’t get much sleep myself. The slightest wiggle or jiggle in the crib, the tiniest squeak sends my heart to my stomach and my stomach into my throat. My heart races 100 beats per minutes, and I stare the monitor, almost without blinking, for several minutes until I know for certain that it was a “false alarm.” I take no solace in knowing that 9 times out of 10, he is just re-adjusting and getting more comfortable.

I have always dealt with strong bouts of anxiety. I have never been given true skills on how to manage it. Deep breathing, mindfulness, yoga, all seem wonderful, but in the split second that occurs between the time your child’s food is resting peacefully in their stomachs to the time it is exploding from their mouths, doesn’t allow me much time to “focus on my breathing.” It has become increasingly frustrating for me to explain this phobia to any one of my therapists. None of them truly understand the essence of the terror. No one understands how to treat it, and chalk it up to simple anxiety, and the phobia is just a manifestation of this. Whether that be true or not, it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

On a day to day basis, I fight with myself over and over again. I look for any sign that someone will be sick. I listen very intently to any changes in my body. I ask myself hundreds of times a day, “what is wrong with me? Why does this have to happen? Am I actually going to be sick this time?” Most of these questions are never answered, and I go around and around in my head, working myself into an absolute tizzy, trying to talk myself down from my state of panic. As I sit here writing this, I realize that my whole family is suffering, and more often than not, I get the feeling that they just don’t care anymore. I have no one as emotional support at the moment. My fiancé refuses to hear it, my Mom is so entirely stressed out from her work load and just trying to keep everyone’s head above water, that I feel like such a burden when I talked to her, and usually she just ignores what I have to say around the issue anyway. I know this isn’t because she doesn’t care or is trying to shut me out, but because she simply doesn’t know what to say anymore, so I just don’t talk about it.
All my life I have been given wonderful things, financial help, a roof to live under and a loving family. I would surely sound like an ungrateful monster if I told anyone that I am not happy, not even a little bit. I can’t remember the last time I could actually enjoy a movie or a night out with my fiancé. We could go, but in the back of my mind would be the fear that I am going to get a phone call from my babysitter, telling me that my little one has been sick and that we need to come home. The funny thing about that is, I should actually stay away if he becomes sick. I can’t comfort him, and quite frankly I don’t want to. I don’t want to touch him or hold him, I don’t want to risk getting thrown up on. I don’t want to see his sad little face, desperately crying for his Mommy. I already have enough guilt; seeing that image is like a knife through my heart.

Today, as I drove to work I realized how truly sad my life actually is. I don’t fit in anywhere. I don’t have a single person whom I trust enough to call my friend. I can’t recall the last time I actually had fun. I dread to the high heavens both going to bed at night and waking up in the morning. Each day is one constant battle after another. The constant nausea, stomach cramps and headaches are too much to bare most days, yet I am required to put on a brave face, both at work, and when I walk through the door at home. I don’t want to go home. My fiancé hates who I have become, but is too afraid to leave because he fears where I will end up. He tells me that he still has hope, but I can see it in his eyes that that is slowly fading away too. I watch him die a little inside each day that this continues. It breaks my heart. It truly wrecks my soul. I want to be someone better for them, but most of all for me. He tells me that he doesn’t know how he could possibly love me like I need him too because I can’t even love myself. Sadly, I know that is true. I know I am impossible to love. I know that I am weak, and tired and have no energy left at the end of the day to work on myself. I am exhausted. It may seem to the unbiased onlooker that I am lazy, that I do nothing, and that I am a bad mother. I sit on the edge of couch, slumped over just staring at my son, watching him play with his toys, begging me to read him a book for the 10 thousandth time or to watch another episode of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Joe doesn’t like when he watches TV and I guess I don’t really either, but at least I can just sit down; at least I don’t have to pretend CONSTANTLY to play the part as Mom, but not feel it for a second. At least I can make him a little happy. At least I don’t have to tell him for the millionth time that Mommy has a tummy ache, or that Mommy is too tired to play. At least I can, for 26 odd minutes, do something right.

My son needs me. He loves me so much, I can see it in his eyes. Despite that fact that from the day he was born I have struggled. He loves me unconditionally in a way that I wish I could return to him. I am so shattered by the fact that I live to fear him. I fear his every move. I fear his cough, his cry, his anger, his happiness, his joy. I fear when he doesn’t want to eat, when he eats too much. I fear when he won’t nap or when he naps too long. I fear when he cries for no reason, and when he cries with every good intention in the world. Despite the fact that all of these are “just part of being a kid,” I don’t see it that way. I fear that I won’t be able to handle things at home much longer and that I will just combust. I fear that I will have to either live this way forever, or face my fears head on. I fear the day my son looks at me and realizes what is going on. I fear the moment he sees me for the real me; when he looks at me and just sees a person, not his Mom, not the person who gave him life, but just a lost soul who doesn’t have the energy from living in fear every day to play with him.
This “mood disorder” (which I hate hearing by the way), is crushing me. Pretend for a second that you were afraid to pee. Think about how devastating that would be. Something that occurs naturally as a normal bodily function but all you can think about is how terrifying it will be when it happens. Day in and day out, you wonder when that moment will come, how long you will have to go, and if it will ever stop. You fear the next time you will have to go like a normal person fears the plague. It consumes your life in such a way that it’s all you can ever think about. Your kids are disturbing to you, almost like their precious faces have become distorted into a creepy monster. They are the epitome of all that you fear. They are the reason you can’t relax. They are the cause of all your horror, dread and dismay of arriving at a new day.

I realize the last example was a little melodramatic, but this fear is real and actual and alive, the only thing it lacks is that I can’t touch it. It isn’t tangible, I can’t dodge it. It is in my face, no one knows when it will happen, so I just sit and wait for it, impatiently and with such dread that I am not entirely sure how I will manage the next “episode.”

As I sit right now, I am backed into a wall, and stuck behind a rock. I need so badly to have someone, anyone, offer me some support, even for a second, someone to tell me that I will be ok, but the people in my life have been so exhausted by trying to take care of me, that they just aren’t willing, or don’t know how, to offer it to me anymore, so I suffer alone, in my head, hating myself for the angst I have caused my family, and doing absolutely nothing about it. All I want is to hide in my room and never come out. Things have gotten so grim in the past year, that I don’t BLAME them for wanting me to go away. I can only imagine the pain they endure, watching someone they love fall apart in front of their very eyes. It stings to know you are the reason for everyone else’s suffering and the reason you suffer yourself.

As crazy as it sounds, I fear even trying. I fear trying because I am afraid it won’t work. I fear letting go because then I have lost the control I have learned to know very well, perhaps the part of me that I think has kept me “safe.” When my fiancé and my son went to visit his family in a different state I remember the weight that was lifted off of me the second they drove away. All I could think of was how excited I was to not have to worry about cribs full of vomit, toddler poop, night time wakings, lack of naps, the fear of my son not eating; if for only 4 days. I could go to bed and wake up and not have to worry about a crabby toddler, and not crabby because he was 2, but because might be sick. I wasn’t excited to have them leave because I was exhausted from being a mother, on the contraire actually, I was excited because I wouldn’t have to think about vomiting so much. It wouldn’t be beaten into my brain with all its persistence and force. Don’t get me wrong, I missed them, but it was pleasant finally, for once, for the first time in over a year, not have to worry about getting thrown up on.

As you can plainly see, this phobia is all consuming. It tears me down and holds me there. It suffocates me. It ruins me. All I want, more than fame, more than money, more than a beautiful house, is for this malfunction to just go away. I want to work properly again. I want to be the Mom whose husband loves her so much for giving herself so wholeheartedly to her children, who is appreciated and loved for who she is. Not the Mom who is seen as an affliction, a disease that just won’t go away, which I know is how I am viewed at the present moment. It punctures me deep within my soul because I know I have nothing left to give. This person, this horrible monster isn’t me. I know me. I have lived with me for a long time before things spun completely out of control. Where is she? When will she come home? When will I be able to go out and enjoy life again? When will life stop looking so grim? I need this, I can’t continue living in this way. Right now, I am nothing more than an empty shell, going through the motions, just to stay above water.

After reading this, you might come to the conclusion that I am depressed and highly anxious, all of which are absolutely true, but I am both of those things because of this phobia. If for even a short time, I found some relief from all of this, I could honestly say that I would never take one more second for granted. Life would truly be rainbows and butterflies because nothing in the entire world could be worse than this.