“Living With Anxiety” – 6/10/20

LIVING WITH ANXIETY:

(*this is meant to reflect the pressure on the brain, the lowercase is there because it’s more appealing to MY eye, and the run on sentence is supposed to be there for the reader to experience some fast paced thinking – similar to what i deal with every day*)

i hate having anxiety and OCD,-> hate it. & i hate posting about it.,; walking  that thin line between “looking for pity” and feeling vulnerable… but! other people like when i do. and I’ve been told i help people – so well: here we GO…

i hate having anxiety. i continuously feel like some bleak version of Mort Rainey from Stephen King’s novella “Secret Window, Secret Garden”. A man, a character, who by definition is described as having psychotic tendencies and severely depressed episodes. And well, the definition of bleak is cold and miserable – so-if i feel like the cold and miserable version of a guy who is severely depressed and has psychotic tendencies, i must be fucked, haha. Or, well, perhaps its means my mind is sedated – just enough …perhaps it means im completely harmless,… aside from my own brain. SO, I won’t hurt you- i’ll just talk your ear off until youre the one who wants to hurt me.

most of the time i look like a writer who’s 2 days behind on his deadline for finishing his next novel,: bags under my eyes, sleep deprived, hair in god knows what form, sitting at a desk frantically typing to make sure i get everything out of my head and onto a typed screen as fast as it goes in because i’m afraid of forgetting how i worded a single anxiety driven though that may help me with me later because it calms me the way i worded it now. chewing on pen caps as i scratch off sentences from my scribbles on torn tea packet container lids that i wrote earlier, trying to decipher my OWN hand writing scribbles i had mid panic attack/melt down as i try to type them out.Words now legible and in categories; coherent sentences on a screen. Something for me to have to look at and to read during my next panic attack.

and to be very frank, it bloody sucks. my hands constantly shaky, sometimes covered in ink, as i desperately try to write  on any piece of anything in arms reach, shushing everyone around me- cursing as my phone freezes or someone decides  to talk to me- erasing the perfectly formed “anxiety killer” sentence from my thoughts. for me personally what REALLY sucks is Never being  able to show how confident I can be because I dissect absolutely everything. not being able to show boys im my own independent woman because if he leaves me on read, i then write a two paragraph apology about a thing i didn’t need to apologize for because my brain told me “he’s choosing not to answer you, because of what you just said. everything was going fine until you sent that. had you not sent that he’d like you.” its never him, its always me – in my mind he’s never busy or having a bad day its “he saw your message, gave an eye roll sat his phone down and/or texted some other girl- he’s done with me for that day”. that part  doesn’t bother me, what bothers me is ANY romantic partner ever wants an independent partner- someone they don’t have to babysit. someone who has their shit together. and i do. its just anxiety has her own shit she feels the need to dump on me. like an uninvited guest who leaves her luggage in the hall instead of taking it to her room.

AND! I’ve been told to never say “it sucks”. Been told by doctors, people or the worst people who THINK they are doctors because they read a google article. I’ve been told to use other language. Such as “its stressful”, “its a process”, “im taking things day by day”, “its manageable tho, and im pushing through.” all of this language that shines a not so negative light- or gives the appearance  its “under control” and/or “its NOT.THAT.BAD.” – but here’s the thing, some days it IS JUST THAT BAD. and some days it IS that easy. Some Days it does just stop at stressful and some days IT JUST SUCKS. There are some days where “i am a woman living with anxiety” and there are some days i am anxiety. I’m never able to go “this is my thought. he/she doesn’t like it? cool.” No. I could be totally confident all damn day and the second someone goes “i don’t like that song your listening to (via my headphones)” my hour or two is ruined. the gears start turning and i question everything. Its not until later where i go “ them not liking it doesn’t mean i had to stop listening to it, it was in MY headphones anyway they couldn’t even hear” – is the thing my brain tells me at 2 am the next morning. When the panic attack has come and gone, ruined another day and I’ve said or done about four or five other things i now regret.

When you tell someone you have anxiety you are immediately dropped into one of two categories – even if they are doing it subconsciously. You’re either A; “the child”;  someone who has to be looked after, cared for, things done for them, needs constant consoling and/or reassurance. Or B; “the clown”; phsycotic, crazy, stupid, can’t think for them selves, can’t make rash decisions, shouldnt be given money or alcohol, looney, wild, head in the clouds. But neither of them have the synonym sentence “adult with sickness”. Its a LOT of shushing, its A LOT of  “use this book”, color, draw the triangle with your anxiety peaks, cuddle the stuffed animal, use the “talking stick”. You’re never treated as AN ADULT WHO HAS A CHEMICAL SICKNESS, your suddenly the “brother up in the attic”, the one they shush and go “yes that makes a lot of sense” – with that weird head tilted to one side nod when you say something, and an eye roll followed by a deep breath as they turn away from you. Someone to appease, do things just enough so they “keep quiet, and let the adults handle the situation.” Anxiety is a sickness, just like over eating is a sickness. But people are quick to dismiss me. If i was sitting at a table across from someone morbidly obese- and they were telling me “oh man, i feel fat,im hot, im tired i have no energy, nothing fits, im exhausted.” and i looked at them and went “yeah, you are fat, you’re hot because your producing more body heat than most, put down the candy bar and lets go for a walk. lose weight and you’ll feel better”- HAHAH id be (putting it politely) the bitch of the century. but people have no problem coming up to me and going “hey, just forget about it.” “anxiety is in your brain right? well don’t think about it, watch a movie.” and its draining. I constantly have my own brain telling me how stupid and pathetic i am, i don’t need your un educated, naive, smart ass to tell me too.

“You need only allow gentle hope to enter your heart. Exhale and allow hope, and give yourself some time. This is a process of change that requires a good deal of self-compassion, which is neither stagnant nor permissive. We can just start by being a little kinder to ourselves and open to the possibility that life doesn’t have to be bloody awful.” - Russell Brand, Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions