Hey, Anxiety!
You've been a bit of an infamous friend to me for almost my entire life, and I'm not sure how exactly to summarize our almost two decades of friendship. At first, you started out as simple separation anxiety, like many other little kids had when I was in preschool. You made me scream and cry in front of my teachers the moment my mom and I parted ways when I had to go off to school. I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from someone so comfortable and familiar. However, despite our rocky friendship, you convinced me to stay friends with you. You never really left my sight. You convinced me to never talk to my classmates growing up because you thought they would scoff at me if I was even to glance at them. You made me view childish banter as intimidating instead of lighthearted and playful so I kept my distance.
In high school, our friendship got a little more complex. You still convinced me to keep my distance from people, because you thought someway, somehow I would hurt them, and they would hurt me. You taught me to be scared of intimate, deep and personal conversations with others. Basically, I was the sun, and you were the moon that eclipsed my feelings so nobody in the world would dare see them. You convinced me my feelings weren't valid or important enough to talk about to others because everyone has it worse… Right?
Despite the fact that you made me keep my distance from people, you still would disconcert my world into a sea of loneliness as a consequence. You told me that I wasn’t good enough for people to love and accept. You sent me in an envious rage when I saw groups of friends clustered together in the cafeteria during lunch because I wanted to spend time with my classmates during the break, but you said there was no point because I wasn’t good enough to be apart of a group of friends. They wouldn’t like me, they would hate me. You deserved to be an outsider. You convinced me that you were the only friend I deserved to have. You taught me how to read into emotions a lot. If you detected an ounce of discomfort or anger from the person I was talking to, you would punish and envelop me in a sea of emotions that I couldn’t escape from. The feelings you gave me left me feeling irrational. My world always felt unstable because of you, as if I was living my life on a tightrope that I could fall from any minute.
You taught me to be afraid of taking chances and failing. You gave me a really hard time when it came to school, especially when I took harder classes because if I didn’t take them, I wouldn’t be good enough for you, and if I did, but got anything lower than a B+ I still wouldn’t be good enough. You’ve been a tough friend to please. You paralyzed me during tests and taught me that I wasn’t smart enough to ace anything I studied for or worked for. You taught me that no matter how hard I worked towards something it would simply never be enough. The inherent fear of failure that you gave to me kept me from pushing myself further in school, in relationships and in life in general.
Listen, Anxiety, I know we've been friends for a long time, but I can't continue like this. I need to be able to accept failures if I learn and grow from them. I have to interact with people without your constraints. I need to be able to accept the fact that it's okay that not everyone will love and accept me. In fact, it'll be better for me because I've learned that the majority of the people that have issues with me usually aren’t worth my time anyways .I need to be able to foster the relationships I do know have potential. Despite the fact we began to drift apart when I got into college, you’ve made some unwelcome appearances at times. However, now I see things a little more clearly. Now you can't constrain me as much, which gives me the strength to even further distance myself from you. Any other time we meet again, I'm going to use you to my advantage, and use the fears you’ve given me to push myself instead of constraining myself.
All in all, I've learned a lot from you. Good and bad I suppose. I can't say I'll miss you, but you don’t control me anymore, and you need to know that.