Spare Paper Bags

Once again, I find myself venturing into a crapshoot. 

Damned if you Alaska, Damned if you don't.  

On Wednesday I will fly to Anchorage for four months, moving a house and a home and a life all in the space of a suitcase.  Well... technically two suitcases and a carry-on.  I will pack, unpack, and eventually repack my belongings, attempting all the while to remind myself of the glamour, freedom, and delight in a suitcase life.  Ultimately I will be happy, but for now I am just utterly exhausted,  I do this to myself all the time- lay the groundwork for solidity and normalcy and throw it all into the wind the second the traveller comes calling.  Or the Federal Government.  

I begin this summer season with an overwhelming sense of trepidation- go figure.  Those paper bags I mentioned in the title?  They are to combat the constant and breath-taking panic attacks that currently strike me.  If you are unfamiliar with such an affliction, a lung-centric panic attack involves the feeling of having a wide sturdy metal vise squeezing tighter and tighter, dictating the flow of air into and out of the body.  Eventually the breath becomes so shallow, so labored... 

So the mantra becomes something along the lines of... Deep Breath, Breathe Deep- Use a Flippin' Paper Bag! If there is, indeed, a deep breath to be had, it is apparently not meant for me.  Not for the time being.  

That is not to say that I am in any way weak enough or timid enough to let the paper bags mentality (affliction) win.  Not even close!  If anything, I will push against the panic to the point that I will recklessly and conspicuously throw myself into this new (life) position with such gusto that I will, more than likely, crash and burn with equal gusto.   

This is, in essence, how I roll.  

The point is- for all of the breath-holding; for all of the uphill battling; for all of the plateauing, struggling, sinking, swimming, drowning; of the past two years... The point is that I will move to Anchorage in a day and half.  

And I will live there.  

So much love, So very much love...