I went to this doctor this past Friday. I began noticing the issue in March, when I went to several regular check-ups and the dentist, and each one had to retake my blood pressure because “it was a little high for you.” When we began preparing for the new school year in August, as the days grew closer and closer and I began to feel overwhelmed by the changes and data I was responsible for collecting, I could feel my heart racing faster than it usually did. It made my whole body ache and more tired, and what’s worse is that it stayed that way for a couple of days. I decided right then and there that I needed to make an appointment, because high blood pressure runs in my family, and it was concerning that I wasn’t even 30 yet and was having such a difficult time going through the day with that.

Of course, it was stress and anxiety. It’s something I’ve known about myself since I was a child, but fear tends to come to me like an unexpected tidal wave of shock. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade on the school bus having a mini-panic attack because I had thought I had lost my homework. I woke up a few years later from a nightmare with fear that I had forgotten my multiplication’s table during Christmas break (do you notice a recurring pattern here?)

I also don’t cope very well with loss. I try my best, but I tend to take it very hard. They say there’s no wrong way to cope with grief, but I’d grown up being discouraged from making any kind of scene, and would be scolded severely if I did so. Even so, I have a hard time controlling those emotions and uncertainties during those times. My grandmother is 83 years old, but in the past few years her health has been steadily declining. I know that eventually she will join her Heavenly Father, and thank God I know I’ll see her again…but it still doesn’t help with that inevitable ache, that emptiness of loss that I know death brings. She is still with us now, thank God, but one day she won’t be. It may not be very long from now, it may be a few years from now – who knows? But she is my last remaining grandparent, and the one I was always closest too, and I see a lot of myself in her. I want to remember her broken English and share as many memories as I can before I have to say goodbye to her.

That being said, when I learned that she would probably need to have heart surgery to fix an ailing valve, and that she would (understandably) decline the surgery, it made me nervous. Very nervous, in fact. My mind wandered to her in in the waiting area with my mother, despite the fact that it needed to be in the classroom, working on professional development and getting things ready for our students returning, both in-person and online.

That was another point of stress as well, figuring out how to teach in-person and remotely, both synchronous and asynchronous types. Throw in the fact that I work with multiple grades and different ages, and we still needed to figure out who was coming and who was staying home, and preparing our classrooms in time for Meet the Teacher, and other important preparations…there’s been a lot that my mind has been soaking on.

There are other obligations I have as well, obligations that I’ve begun to neglect because I’ve felt overwhelmed. The desire to do them is still there, but when I go to do it, I find that I don’t have the energy to actually go through with it. By the end of the week, my chest was hurting from my heart beating so much and I’d begun to experience painful migraines. By the time I reached home after Meet the Teacher, I was dead on my feet and couldn’t even read my book for leisure it hurt so much.

That Friday I went to the doctor for the appointment I asked for, thankfully on a day that didn’t conflict with any training. After what felt like an eternity, I finally followed the nurse to the room where she began asking me questions. After sharing my symptoms and my concerns, as well as the fact that I was also a teacher, she began a screener and asked me a series of questions asking about my emotional state. It was pretty obvious from answering them that I had at least a moderate amount of anxiety affecting me. The doctor soon came to meet me; he had seen me in the hallway moments ago and could tell my body was very tense from the way I was walking.

I explained to him that I’d tried different remedies and techniques to help me relax, but my brain would not calm down. I had trouble sleeping soundly through the night in addition to all the other issues. Logically, I knew the solution to the problem. My brain was working in overdrive, however, and was working into a constant panic – and it was leaving me exhausted as a result. My doctor explained that I had very good qualities that this has helped me with in the past – I was “very efficient” (his word, not mine). After seeing me for several years now, he knows my tendency to be very much a structured person – I like to have guidelines to follow, and will follow them to the best of my ability to perform the best that I can. When those guidelines become vague, however, or disappears, I start to panic because I’m left in free-fall. It’s a struggle I’ve known about myself ever since I was training to become a teacher – as an educator, you need to leave yourself room to be flexible and think on your feet, that the first plan you have may not be the one you end up using. As a student, however, I was pretty much trained to be as ‘efficient’ as possible – having structure helped me learn as best as I could as a student. As a teacher, though, it’s a whole new challenge that I’m still learning how to overcome.

Our first day was today, and thankfully went much smoother than I was anticipating. All my worries and concerns turned out to have been a great fabrication my brain created. Will there be problems to overcome in the future? Most definitely. The future is never clear. I hope that with time and with prayer, I’ll learn how to let go a little bit better. I called my grandmother this evening and let her know how my first day back went. She is still doing well, and I’m determined to spend more time with her as I can, even in these crazy COVID times. I’m so grateful of the verses my friends have sent me and the prayers given to me, because I know I needed them, and still need them. Even through the murkiness that fear causes, however, I know deep down that hope will prevail every time, and God’s wisdom is greater than mine could ever be.