Some of my most vivid memories of a being a child are of Christmas Eve, typical family traditions: eating snacks for hours, red wrapping paper everywhere, the smell of cookies and candles, family, love: everything the holidays are about. We could have been recorded for a Christmas commercial. But the night always ended in me being sick in the bathroom long into the early hours of the morning. One of the most happy, exciting nights for children; stolen from me by my anxiety.
Isn’t that the hardest thing about facing anxiety? It’s a thief. It steals hope, it steals ambition; it shoves you into a whirlwind of fear. They say that learning our triggers helps us to cope, to avoid those situations and to deal. But I don’t want to run. I don’t want to buckle in fear. There is nothing wrong with standing in a room of people, there is nothing wrong with ordering my own meal. So why is it then that I repeat multiple times in my mind what I’m going to say, rearranging the words frantically, analyzing how it must sound from across the room: over and over before I even mummer anything? Because if we allow it, anxiety can steal our voice too.
When I was 17, I faced my first trigger. I began working in a grocery store, I placed myself in the center of a situation surrounded by people, commotion, constant stimulation. The first few weeks were agony. My mom would drive me to work and I was ill with anxiety. I would cry the whole way. It took me a month before I could look anyone in the eye. I worked there for four years; and of course there were days I was shaking in the bathroom on my breaks. Or there were shifts someone wouldn't speak to me in just the right way to make me crack. Sometimes I would sneak off to buy a huge bag of peanut M&M's. I would eat myself sick, I wanted to have a "logical" excuse, something someone could understand... I was sick. Self-inflicted, but I was sick. I overcame.
I didn't start driving until I was 19; that was and still is a huge trigger of mine. Thankfully, my mother allowed me to take it at the pace I felt most comfortable with. It was weeks and weekends spent on back roads, spinning the tires, slamming on the breaks too hard, one telephone pole accident, and a lot of tears. I became embarrassed constantly when people would ask why I didn't drive; I never felt like the truth was an acceptable answer. I felt afraid, afraid of the car, of the other drivers, my mind would play the endless amounts of terrible possibilities in an instant. I overcame.
It wasn't much long after that that I started to admit what I was feeling, when I was feeling it. I stopped hiding behind the excuse that I "didn't feel well" or that "my head hurt" as to why I couldn't accomplish something right there. I was tired of hearing voices echo in the back of my mind, "You NEVER feel well." I started telling the truth: I was anxious. And that within itself was a liberating feeling.
Not everyone in the world is receptive to the fact that anxiety is an illness. I've ended friendships, relationships, and conversations with strangers over my anxious mind. There are people out there who will just never understand that anxiety can leave you crippled on the bathroom floor at 2 AM. It can hit you in the middle of your work day, it can force you to close yourself off from the people in your life that mean the most.
It can leave you mentally and physically exhausted. Anxiety can have your mind running relentlessly in the deep dark hours of the night and when you've finally exhausted the realm of horrifying possibilities, you awake with a tight hole in your chest feeling like a part of you is out there wandering around searching for answers to problems that don't exist. The rest of the day is a zombie-like haze of shaking hands, pacing steps and choking back fire-hot tears. Never for a moment can you shake the overwhelming sense of doom upon you. The lists stack up internally of all the things you need to accomplish, "Here and now" whispers, anxiety.
Anxiety will rule your world. It will direct every moment of your life if you allow it. There are days when I can't get out of bed. The whole world feels like it's out to get me, the weight is just too heavy. But there're the better moments of rationalizing and of conscious thinking in the tense seconds before a first date, an interview, doing anything out of the norm: reminding myself "this isn't anxiety, you're allowed to feel nervous. THIS IS NORMAL. Anxiety has stolen too many precious moments from me to sit back and play it safe any longer.
