panic

*I suffer with depression. I take medication so I can live with my depression. When I go off the meds, I lose my mind. I can't see reality, I am super moody, and end up wanting to kill myself. So thanks to 300mlgs of Zoloft daily, I am able to deal. I get out of bed and live a more or less typical life.

*But when it comes to travel, to packing up our lives and leaving town for days or even weeks, I freak! A few summers ago, I could not leave the house with out the crock pot being shinny clean. While packing to go see my family at the holidays, i was reduced to a babbling idiot on the floor of my daughters room because her laundry was not put away. I was 99% sure I could not go if this was not fixed. I needed to have everything "just right" so I could leave knowing my home was in order. I walked in circles and was unable to do the very tasks I needed to have done in the first place.

*I don't traditionally have panic attacks, but that is what this felt like. The overwhelming irrational fear that everything is not as it should be, that I need to have months world of disorder ordered before we can drive off for a week in Michigan. I feel like a nut while it is going on, but I am helpless to stop these feelings, until now!

*Tomorrow we get on a plane for the first time as a family of FOUR! We are spending the spring holiday week with my parents in paradise. So to get out of the house on time and without a freak out, I have been packing and readying things for 3 weeks now. The kids items have been triple packed, their clothing weeded out and their cary on crap well sorted. My husbands things have been washed and triple sorted and my clothing is well on the way to being "in the bag".

*All is not totally perfect... However when I felt like I was about to lose it, I went out... walked the aisles of Marshall's and got magazine's from Barnes & Noble. I even think tomorrow before we go I may get my own laptop!

*I have yet to feel the overpowering panic like I have in the past. I have a list of things to do for tomorrow, a realistic idea of what I can really get accomplished, and I forbid myself to feel like the world is gonna crazy down because i did not pack enough _______ for the trip.

**We will make it! Florida here we come!