Our life in France, Part Two

You take it with you (my battle with anxiety)

I mentioned in my first post that our decision to move to France was largely a form of escape. I was close to burnout at work (although I don’t think I knew the term) and would be ill every other week. I was also struggling with crippling anxiety.

The idea of leaving my job and moving somewhere brand new and utterly tranquil was appealing for so many reasons. And I felt that if I could just make it to France, everything would be OK.

Lots of things were. It was sunny, I was finally pregnant, I no longer had to mark endless books. But what I hadn’t fully acknowledged was that as well as running away from my circumstances, I was running away from myself.

Sadly, I brought my anxious mind and tendency to catastrophise with me. When you’re living in a rural idyll with few friends, when there are fewer distractions and obligations and family are over 500 miles away, you have little to do but face up to yourself.

While I loved having Lily, born in December 2009, the hormonal aftermath was brutal. It took at least six months to regain any sort of equilibrium, and when I look back at some of my cute photos from the time, I have to remind myself that inside I was dying.

The anxiety I suffered from was extreme, my mind was constantly racing, despite the face I presented to the outside world. My second pregnancy was a twin pregnancy and I ended up being hospitalised for both physical and mental health reasons. And honestly, I wondered if I’d ever be able to live a normal life.

You can live in paradise, but if you don’t have peace of mind, it’s largely meaningless.

I had no alternative but to take on the fight.

That’s not to say I hadn’t tried in the past. I’d had regular counselling and CBT, hospital input and medication. I had overcome the worst of my anxiety time and time again. But the algorithms in my rain were well tuned into an anxious habit – I kept being drawn back in and more deeply.

I’m a relatively private person and well aware that my children might stumble over this one day so  won’t go into too many details. But things were BLEAK for a long time. When I did ‘recover’ I still never had peace of mind, just a level of anxiety that could just about live with.

The good thing about living in France at the time was that I was forced to face up to this anxiety. I couldn’t bury myself in work or shopping or friends. I had to find a way to tackle it, to reclaim my brain from its grip.

Eventually, I succeeded.