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Yup. That's how it feels. A loopy spirally suckhole of public farting, death, and other fun thoughts.
Most people who know me have seen me vibrate with anxiety, at least once. Some of them have never asked me - bless their juicy common sense - to “RELAAAXX!” A few of them have ~actually~ soothed my worries with their magical ears of empathy. And a handful of these angels have called me too, when they were vibrating with it.
None of us has conquered anxiety yet and returned to our fearless, wonderful, toddler selves, despite our best efforts.
Anxiety is a sticky, sticky mess.
I’m not talking about your annual exam fever or the nervousness before your big presentation. Sure that’s anxiety. But that’s not the capital A Anxiety. Let me describe what the capital A Anxiety feels like:
Imagine a dollop of butter melting - on your brand new laptop - while your hands are covered with fabric paint - and your less favorite parent walks in - with your least favorite relative - who asks you about your future plans - in detail - while your keyboard soaks all the butter.
Imagine. The. Panic. (even if it seems bizarre, especially if it seems bizarre)
Now think about the panic getting encoded in your system. It is like a rainbow of the ugliest colours on a hot day of possible acid rain. As if one is walking ten fucking kilometers, in the tightest undergarments, under the loosest clothes.
Capital A Anxiety is the frequent, blood clotting, bile boiling, gut-wrenching dress rehearsal of death.
You probably just thought - ‘is she exaggerating?’ Maybe because you have never gone through it. And I thought - ‘am I exaggerating?’ Maybe because I am a card-carrying member of the SHCSG: Special Hell of Constant Second-Guessing. Everything goes downhill once a tiny voice asks a sneaky-ass question, “How can everything be right? There must be something really wrong.”
Capital A Anxiety SPECTACULARLY, regularly, - interferes with the basic AF functioning expected from an average adult. My mind loves taking honeymoons with indecision, be it big life decisions or what to order for lunch. It feasts on breaking news or hot social media posts. Currently, it thinks coronavirus is coming for me. And right this moment, it’s freaking out about passing it on to people I love.
It doesn’t stop once (for fuck’s sake) to consider the probability: that the people I love are safe. That they are not having accidents. My mind, ladies and gentlemen, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning dystopian novelist.
This is a necessary feature in human beings: to prepare our body for flight or fight, at any sign of threat. It saved our asses when we lived in the jungles. The problem is: now it doesn’t take the flash of a snake’s tail to switch on my high-alert state. A simple reply from my boss - “Ok”, instead of his usual “Okay” - will do. The lack of two letters will set in motion, a dangerous choreography of self-doubt and worthlessness, until I’m short of breath. Tight-muscled. Vibrating with ideas of everything I can do to get the normal ‘Okay’ (which obviously is a symbol of his approval of me and my work, duh!)
Is that irrational? Hell yeah. Rationality is to the anxious mind - what the disgusting photograph on a cigarette box is - to a chain smoker. We’re an expert at ignoring it. Anxiety might be irrational, but it is real.
I want the world to take anxiety seriously. Because I’m not the only hostage of anxiety. It is very much in the air. And very much a fruit of the larger cultural and socio-political disasters. Our traditional support systems have collapsed. Individuals are crumbling under perfectionism and its constant display. Governments have brutally betrayed their people. In this shitfest, anxiety becomes a special kind of violence - an embodied violence.
Anxiety is not just my personal failure to gain perspective. It is our collective clusterfuck. It might be my disease, but it is the symptom of a sick world.
I need the world to take anxiety seriously. Only then, I can start taking it less seriously. If it didn’t ask me to ‘stop overthinking’ (I would have done that decades ago if I could, you assholes), I can start taking my thoughts with thick pinches of salt. If it stopped dismissing me, telling me problems aren’t even problems, you know, capital P problems, I can finally make sense of them.
Yes, my intellect knows that my privilege will protect me from actually living all my nightmares. But if the world understood, that intellectual maturity has so very little to do with mental-emotional health, I can stop vibrating, and start the deeper work of healing.
PS: I was just kidding. I’m not really gonna wait for the world to co-operate, anymore. But a girl can dream.