Loud Silence

My life is somewhat stressful right now. Actually, my husband and I are somewhat stressed right now. With the usual stresses of work, finances, and life, my mother-in-law has terminal cancer and is fading fast. At the time of this writing, she is stable, and we have help from cousins to see her, spend time with her, and help with her care.

Since she is stable, and we do not know for how long, my husband and I took a small trip less than two hours away from home. We are staying in a beautiful cabin in the woods. It is a break my husband desperately needed. He communicated that he reached his breaking point a couple of weeks ago.

Since his mother’s diagnosis, we have had to empty her apartment, find a new home for her kitty that we could not take, deal with insurance and billing, endless calls and meetings with doctors, and her palliative care team, on top of facing the imminent loss of a parent. My husband, Mark, has been to see her just about every day since she was placed in a palliative care facility a month ago. He is her only child, and she has no siblings.

(Please don’t read this as complaining or whining. This is what anyone in our situation would be dealing with. This is just backstory.)

Yesterday afternoon, when we arrived at the cabin, I was agitated. There was no reason for my agitation; it was just a mood I was in. (I’m bipolar, and mood swings happen frequently).

We didn’t take long to unload the car, as we didn’t bring much. Before we were totally unpacked, I wanted to get the firestick up and running on the TV. One of the charms of this place is that it has wifi. I couldn’t get the firestick working, and it pissed me off. Here we were in this beautiful setting, the wonder of nature all around us, in a lovely cabin, and all I was worried about was making sure we got the firestick working. Here’s why.

Nighttime is awful for me. Aside from being bipolar, I have racing thoughts. Night time, when the day is done, my phone is quiet, and Mark is long in bed, I am wide awake with anxiety and racing thoughts. The silence is sometimes so loud, and that is what triggers hours of racing thoughts and anxiety. It causes insomnia and messes with my sleep schedule. So, I have gotten used to drowning out the loud silences with media. Some of the thoughts I need to process. Like coming to terms with my mother’s death. Like coming to terms with my mother-in-law’s imminent death. They get drowned out by media as well. Disassociating is easiest, but that is not always the most healthy coping mechanism.

So, the thought of not having my coping mechanism available at night really got me twisted. When we first got to the cabin, we noticed the a/c was not working. Thankfully, the owner got it fixed by nine o’clock. That was another thing that had me in an agitated state. We ate dinner, hung out on the deck, and soaked in the hot tub. We had some wine and just enjoyed the surroundings. That helped calm me down and changed my mood. We went into the house and decided to try to get the firestick working again. Mark got it figured out, and I had my distraction. I didn’t feel good about it though. I feel like somehow I failed. Mark and I talked about it and agreed that I am using media as a coping mechanism.

Both nights we were away, I went to my standby and used media to drown out the silence. I do believe this is something I want to talk to my therapist about. Hopefully, I will learn some different coping skills for racing thoughts and anxiety.

I would love to go to bed and fall asleep instead of tossing and turning. I want to learn how to just be in the loud silence and get used to not filling it with the noise in my head or with media.

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Here is another piece I wrote about bipolar disorder.

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