This last month hasn’t been easy. In retrospect, I should have gone to France ahead of taking Lily to school so I could have been busy settling in. I need to be busy and not just anticipating. Last night around 11:30 pm a new, yet familiar feeling settled in. TERROR. Pure, amazingly strong, near-paralyzing, fear.

It had first visited the week prior unexpectedly when I went to bed with a belly full of wine. My body had been relaxed last Thursday but my mind hummed. TERROR, or at least irrational fear visited me in my bed. I am not a stranger to this experience but I had not felt this particular feeling associated with my move before that night. It snuck up on me and it was unwelcome.

All I could think about as I lay in my bed was that my new home in France was heated by wood and I didn’t know how to make kindling. Matthew has always chopped the kindling. It just magically appears in a basket by the fire place. I can make a great fire, but what the hell would I do without the kindling? At 10 pm last Thursday, it was all I could think about. I was confident that I would undoubtedly freeze to death in France because of a lack of kindling. My heart raced.

Fear is a strange thing. Obviously I was focusing on a bizarre detail of worry that really wasn’t important but that is how the TERROR first visited me. That’s how it got its toe in the door. I was eventually able to use all my strategies for relaxation to fall asleep but just a few days later…last night….. TERROR came to stay. Or at least it has not yet gone away.

TERROR always visits me at night and last night, it came and settled not as a racing thought but as a heavy blanket that completely weighed me down. It wasn’t a detail – it was EVERYTHING. What the hell am I doing? I am leaving my family and moving half way across the planet for what? For a dream? Sweet Jesus. The idea that I am hurting the people I love in making this decision takes my breath away. It almost makes it impossible.

Except, I refuse to use terror as an excuse. I have danced with fear and anxiety my whole life and I am determined to lead at this point. I have to try. I believe I am worth it. I pray love will find a way. Here’s to walks in the rain, long bike rides, runs, conversations with friends, chocolate peanut butter pie, booze, and pharmaceuticals to get me through the next 7 days. I can do this.