Laugh or cry its my choice

you know they say if life gives you lemons make lemonaide? yea right that is just exactly what i thought back then . i couldnt have seen the forrest through the trees back then or the humor in anything back then . I was lucky if i could get up and face one day and get by with out panicing or having major anxiety attacks. it was aweful.
i would jump when the phone rang or when someone knocked on the door before noon.
periodically i would be fine and then all it would take was one thing to set me off and i was back in that box of fear. not able to eat or sleep to scared to face anything.
i began to take a look at where i was and try to make some changes.
i think the first thing that stuck me and helped was knowing that my own ma god rest her soul had done this very thing with more then one son in vietnam and here i was carrying on like this with one son in the navy.
then i thought how in the heck did they do it during world war one and two or any other war for that fact. then i began to see what some of my major source of trouble was and put huge distances between me and those things. one was the news back then any news for the wars took forever to arrive here for anyone to see. by the time they got ahold of it it was all old news anyway and you may as well not take it to heart. good thing to notice right? not so with now everything happening in this war was instantly played in our homes via tv. then of course my home page on line being msn ran the news of the wars too so it was... ok log on and run past that quickly. dont look now dont make things worse then they are. right? kinda a kin to shoving my head in the sand and keeping it there . but hey sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
yep i noticed right off that i had to stop watching the news or picking up news papers in fact i once said the news on the tv was worse then the terroirsts because they had this need to replay the whole thing over and over like a broken record day and night over and over until you could see the towers going down with your eyes closed. they did the same thing pretty much with both the afganistan war and the Iraq war too. not to mention the other things going on after the towers such as the antrax scares. yep i did occasionally give in and watch but very quickly knew it was not the thing to do because i noticed i was very upset once i did that. so i kept avoiding it best i could.
time has a way of healing all wounds if you give it a chance that is for sure.
i remember during the time my son was in Iraq and i was a basket case and couldnt seem to pull out of it we lost a good friend of ours and after that one morning i could hear her voice as clear as a bell saying " your alive why don't you act like it" those words rang in my head for along time and during that time i decided those words were right on the money and so for weeks i woke up and pretended i was ok i woke up and said today i am alive. and i would fight to get out of bed and funtion as a normal human being and not give into nothing. i would put on that fake smile and just go go go and finally the smile wasnt fake and getting up was a pleasure again.
you see during that time in the beginning of his being in iraq i went to the doctors and was in such a panic over being sick that the only thing i walked out of there with were drugs to keep my mind in one peice but nothing for the illness i did have or cold what ever it was.
well all good and well. i am glad this new doctor had somethng in mind but you see i would never make a good junkie you cant get me to take nothing unless i know its something going to save my life for sure. being nuts is not in that area as far as i am concerened. and pills wont fix the problem of what is going on in my life after all the only solution i could see back then and at any time this thing reared its ugly head was for my son to not be in the Navy at all and that isnt going to happen so it was up to me to learn to live with it and deal and that is what i struggled to do . at one time during my daughters visit to me from out of state it was reported that i was screaming in my sleep that is how bad i got. but only those close to me knew what nighmares i lived with . those not had no clue. because i only shared with those i trusted totally.
i ran into the bagdad blogger back then too during the beginning of the Iraq war and kept track of his blogs. i dont know him personally but how he was dealing with being over there as a civilion really hit me. through that blog and others that hit the news back then i located other blogs of note and decided there was something to all this so i began one of my own. i didnt feel comfortable talking about my experiences back then so i wrote about the hummor in my everyday life.
anything back then but the war at hand was what i talked about and when i did talk about my son i did it fast and went on. like i didnt want to sit and think to hard about any of it .
i have lived with about all of it now the ups downs and the roller coaster ride of being a military mom and its really my choice if i want to laugh or cry. personally ???????? i choose to laugh. no matter what comes my way i dont want to go back to that closet of fear or panic or not being able to go through one day with out crying my eyes out. i would rather smile and laugh and know no matter what country my son is in today the same sky is over our heads and i can look up and see the sky and know god set those stars there for all of us no matter where we are. :)))