Yielding to Reality

We moved into the basement five nights ago.

It's been wonderful to sleep in our king size bed again, 

not to mention sleeping in an actual room in an actual house.
And the bathroom?
FIVE STAR!

I spent a good part of the day yesterday

clearing out and cleaning the trailer.

It took longer than I had expected, 

which was a bit frustrating because 

there are so many other things I need to be working on.

But, we really want to get that thing buttoned up
for the approaching winter months.

As I was giving that ridiculously small  bathroom
its final scrub-down of the year,

I felt an unexpected, but familiar sensation coming over me:

panic.

My first experience with panic attacks was in the Spring 1986.

It would take too much time to go into details, 

but it wasn't until nearly ten years later that I realized 

what I'd been dealing with.

Once I leaned about panic and anxiety attacks,

I knew, or simply decided, that I could and would take control

and not let those episodes consume or debilitate me as they previously had.
I did not want to be and was determined not to be
dependent on any type of medication
if I could help it.

Since then, there's only been one time, back in March of 2010
when Dean bought me a puppy for an early birthday gift,
(yes, my sweet Allymo)
that I wasn't quite able to muster the will to bridle the affects.
Yeah.
That, too, is a whole other blog post for another time.
Anyway,
as I scrubbed and rinsed the shower walls
and recognized the approaching panic,
I asked myself, "Why?".
That is the first step in controlling the episodes.
It didn't take much evaluation, right then and there, to come to the
realization that living in our trailer was harder
than I'd allowed it to be and that reality
seemed to suddenly close in on me.
Kind of like willing myself to control panic attacks,
I'd willed myself to be okay with living in our 23.5 ft travel trailer for
FIFTEEN MONTHS.
Don't get me wrong...
It wasn't 15 months of complete awfulness;
it was just a very long time.
I'm glad that's all behind us now.
And, honestly...
I'm grateful for that little trailer and the experience it's given us.
It allowed us to be right here, literally just steps away
from getting a tremendous amount of work done,
then coming in to wash up, have a hot meal,
quickly get back to work, then conveniently shower away
the dirt and grime, and sleep off the resulting exhaustion
on a pillow-top mattress, all the while
being a constant presence here at
Our Retro Bungalow.
I'm proud of  Mr & Me
because, together, we can do hard things -
really hard things.
And let me say just once more...
 I'm happy we're done with that part of this incredible experience -
really happy.