Christi Wampler

I still tear up way more than I ever have, and am learning to accept that as a part of me. I’m trying to embrace tears as a visceral human reaction to life, not as a sign of weakness or cause for embarrassment.

All I could think of is the millions of couples who have committed decades to each other, going through life’s ups and downs as a team only to be told by society, by laws, by our leaders that “You may feel married, but you aren’t.”

We just blew $1500 on a car … we have to make a car payment soon … This will be at least $500 … That was all I could make sense of. I couldn’t grasp that my child could have died and I missed it.

A few days later, I began having heart palpitations and cold sweats. Mentally, I felt fine, but physically, I was kind of a wreck. But both worlds collided one day while I was working at my then-job at Estee Lauder. I remember it so well…

While on medication, I was able to fight these storms as a whole person, not a wounded and vulnerable creature.

I can trace my anxiety back to kindergarten. As a child, I spent an inordinate amount of time puking. I wasn’t sickly or malnourished. I just puked on the regular.

So if Zoloft works so well and I have been living with anxiety my whole life, why stop? Pretty simple. Sex. Or actually, lack of sex. Well, to be REALLY technical, lack of sex DRIVE.

No. It’s not paradise. Because it’s not supposed to be.