ALL YOU TOUCH AND ALL YOU SEE IS ALL YOUR LIFE WILL EVER BE.

Kudos to you if you figured out the title of this blog post are lyrics from the Pink Floyd song Breathe from their amazing album Dark Side of the Moon.
I did not steal it, I'm merely borrowing it to make a point. You'll see (maybe, I make no promises)

If you don't know the song please give it a listen. Below are the lyrics.  Read them.

"Breathe, breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care
Leave but don't leave me
Look around, choose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all your touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

Run, rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down, it's time to dig another one
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave"

Today I was driving and listening to the album for maybe the 500th time, or something like that. I've listened to these songs quite a few times and I've always knew that this song has something to do with "life" in general. Living and dieing, the rat race, our misplaced time, etc.
But
Today I was listening and that line hit me a little different than usual. "All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be"
I was just thinking
"Yes, that must be right" it just hit me.
These lyrics can be interpreted in a million ways I know and believe me they are. I did a little research today and checked out one of those song lyric meaning forums and it's chock full of other people's opinions of the song which is fine. They were all pretty much on the same page give or take a few details. Just like any anxiety forum ironically.

To me that line means a few things. It has to do with the physical and the mental.
Physically: Whatever you see, your surroundings, the people in your life, your job, the places you choose to go and situations you choose to take part in will be your life.  Constantly surrounding yourself with assholes? Well guess what?! You're probably one of them.  Hanging out with deadbeats?
You get it.
Mentally: Whatever you think about all the time will be your realty.
Your outlook
Your concerns
Your dreams
Fears
Etc

It brought me back to the post I wrote yesterday about fear.
All I think about is my fear or how I'm  getting over my fear.
My anxiety or how I'm getting over it or past it.
Breathing exercises to calm down
Meditation
Thought replacement
All the "bad" things in my head AND all the "good" things that I do to get past the bad things really amount to the same thing.
Everything on my mind is anxiety or anxiety related. 
Fear based of some kind.

Now I know I'm in the process of healing and maybe so are you. Don't get stressed I'm not saying these methods of healing are wrong but understand that they are still part of anxiety and connected to it.
Just like methadone is connected to heroin or nicotine vape pens are connected to cigarettes. 
Meditation is a great practice for a healthy peaceful life and so is breathing exercises and eating healthy, etc
But
They must exist in their own right in my life because as long as they are in place to help rid myself of anxiety or take the place of anxiety, Anxiety is still in my life big time.
I don't want to end up in a constant struggle with anxiety for the rest of my life. Surrender and acceptance seem to be the best methods but I want to take it a step farther.
I do not know what that is yet.  Sorry. I'm still working this shit out too.

I just know that I don't want to end up like the rabbit in the song
In an early grave

I know the grave will be the place I will end up as will the rest of us but I just want to make sure I'm not sitting somewhere alone with a tense body biting my nails and rocking back and forth in a worry some anxious state as I die. 

I don't know how I'd "like" to die but I do know how I don't want to go, especially if the way I least want to go is as avoidable as anxiety.

I hope this wasn't too bleak. Thank you for reading!

As always I'd love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Lou Raio
AKA 
The Louniverse

NOT LETTING FEAR RUIN YOUR DAY AND YOUR LIFE.

I was just about to go onto Google and begin a search about a feeling that is bothering me. I have health anxiety, I'm a hypochondriac.  So, my leg hurts in a place where I can see there's a vein. For some reason the combination of these two things sends me running to the Internet for answers and reassurance. Two things I RARELY find in a Google search about something that's bothering me either physically or mentally.

Sound familiar?

If so please keep reading. I am writing this for you. You the person reading this and me in the future also reading this. Fear has controlled my life through anxiety for as long as I can remember and today is no different.  I was just about to begin a search online through Yahoo message boards,  Web MD vague "93 possible diagnosis" sections which are always horrifyingly terrible or blogsposts from other sufferers, doctors, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, etc, etc
You know this pattern.
It's starts there and ends with more anxiety,  more questions, more irrational fears, more, more, more
Unrest
Uneasiness
Sleeplessness
Imbalance
The list can go on forever

However, the more I "research" my anxiety the more I realize we all have exactly the same symptoms, fears and follow the same train of thought nearly to the tee minus of course some very tiny individualized nuances of symptoms specific to us.

We get a "feeling" or a "thought" our body begins the process of fight or flight usually, 9 times out of 10 before we even know it and boom we run to the Internet and self diagnosis and worse seemingly convince ourselves of the worst case scenario. 
I don't get aches I get deep vein thrombosis. I get lung cancer, throat cancer, swollen lymph nodes, the silent killer widow maker heart attack! 
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I'm either fine or having the longest lasting slowest killing heart attack in human medical history.
Right?
We know we're fine but still find ourselves breaking out in sweats. Trembling. Nauseous and scared.

All of it sucks. But it is a choice.

Now I know that sounds weird. Why would ANYONE choose these things. Well, we do and we dont, but we definitely do.

An ache or a pain or a feeling, a thought, anxiety, fear,  horror,  panic...
All natural, all normal. 
WE anxious bunch of beautiful little coconuts take these normal short lived human emotions and drag them out and over think ourselves into some of the worst living a human can give to itself.
The truth sucks and it's no excuse but then again it is a condition and it is happening and feeling powerless is just as natural and normal. So, breath. It's fine. You're alive today despite all the above problems and the problems you'll find later tonight when you take your cloths off and see [insert scary body part]

It's ok.

Now, even as I'm typing this my anxiety is hard at work. My anxiety is crafty. It's after all, me. It's knows me like I know me. I can't outsmart it but I can ignore it, right?
Right now it's telling me that everything I've just written is bullshit.  No one wants to read this and basically this is all one big long attempt at reassurance. 
It's just me distracting myself from my feelings by writing this thing to distract you from your feelings all while reassuring me and maybe you.
And maybe that's true.
No. No its not.

I'm writing this because I know what anxiety is. I know how anxiety, health anxiety and all this fear has turned my life into a stagnant cycle of repeating past mistakes, getting stuck in bad unfulfilling situations and not living a life. Plain and simple. 

NOT. LIVING. A. LIFE.
Anxiety is a full time job for me on top of my other full time job.
It distracts me from every single aspect of my life every single minute of every single day for as long as I can remember.
I do not remember NOT being anxious.
Fear takes up nearly all of my energy. All of my mental capacity.  It ruins everything while leaving me just enough to participate in life from the perspective of a free to walk around prisoner's stand point. I can go and do whatever I like just as long as I don't mind the never ending over thinking chatter in my head.  The over sensitized body and the irrational fear encyclopedia chained to my feet wherever I go.
You can't call out of work by telling your boss "you can come into work today because there's just too much on your mind"
You're too busy fighting a battle in your head and cannot interact with the outside world today.
So, sorry family. Sorry job, sorry significant other, friends, and everyone else. 
Sound like your life at all?

Everyday I imagine a knight fighting a dragon. Everyday both the knight and the dragon die.  No one wins. 
Am I the knight or am I the dragon? 
Is the dragon my anxiety?
I think they're both me. They have the same eyes.  The Knight fights to the bitter end every time. He nearly defeats the dragon completely then usually is struck with a fatal blow.  A last gasp of the Dragon who is also fatally wounded and they both go down. Interpret that how you like. I think of it all the time.
Stalemate. No winner, but I feel like I still lose.
I change myself and limit myself and alter my demeanor and emotions as to not wake the beast up but in doing so I become a shadow of my former self. I am barely a person in those moments and that's my everyday.

I let my fear control my entire life.
It's lead me to so many positive outlets that have never truly helped because the fear is the strongest. It outlasts everything in me.
I've learned to meditate, breath, take a minute or ten or twenty or an hour and rest. Eat healthier. Stop smoking cigarettes, lessen my caffeine intake and I can go on forever.
All of this is because those things at one time or another gave me anxiety about my body and I dropped them in order to appease the fear. 

No more.  I'm still going to continue to eat healthy and not smoke cigarettes and not over use caffeine but I'm doing it because it's healthy and I feel good and that's it. If I have coffee I won't think about heart attacks or strokes.
If I eat something not so healthy I won't think about purging myself with water to flush it out of me ASAP because of a myriad of irrational reasons. 
I do things for me now.  Starting today. 
I choose to be happy not because it's going to pay off someday or distract me from the moment or keep the dragon asleep but because I want to be happy. That's it.
It's a choice.
Always was and always will be.
I know it. You know it. Now let's begin a practice. 
Just sit down, take a few deep breaths, close your eyes and feel the surroundings you're in RIGHT NOW.  This is the moment.  This is reality.  This is everything.

I truly hope this blog post has helped at least a little bit.  I hope you related to it and know that you're not alone and that most importantly You. Are. Fine.

I'd love to hear from you!

Sincerely, 

Lou Raio
AKA
The Louniverse