This took guts I didn't know I had

Imagine this, you are sitting in a restaurant with your mother, the waiter brings back the wrong order, your mom notices and she tells you to tell the waiter that that’s not what you ordered, you tell her its fine, that you think you should try new things instead but she still insists.  she calls for your waitress. Your heart starts pounding, your hands start getting sweaty, your hands start to tremble. You stutter as you try to explain why you would rather settle for the food In front of you. You excuse yourself to the bathroom, living your mother to handle the food issue.

Or better yet, you go out with your friends. Celebrate your youth you know. Then mid-sentence, in the middle of your favourite song, the room starts spinning. The temperature starts rising. you’re sweating now and between the bodies rubbing against each other in dance and the alcohol in your hands you don’t know which one is causing this sudden heat. You run outside, no words said. just clenching teeth and hoping digging your nails into your hands will hold the avalanche that’s coming. no words said just your heart pounding in your ears and the land beneath your feet being pulled from you. 

oh, and my personal favourite, you’re lying in bed. and then you remember, that when you were 10 you did something embarrassing. your mouth dries up, you feel the blood rushing away from your face. the air hitches in your throat and it feels like its suffocating you. your lungs go on strike, leaving your brain starving. your misses a beat, then two, then it does this silly little one two step, where the first beat is just half a beat, and the second reverberates through your body.

This is all I have known. All my life, I can trace it back to when I was around 9. Only then, I was just the shy kid, the quiet kid. A brand I held on to until I rebranded into just anxiety, its catchy like that, rolls of your tongue. Say it out loud and hear it yourself, Anxiety.  I never really knew that it wasn’t normal to have that much exam fever, I mean I was 11. clammy hands, palpitations, and dry mouth when I wrote that maths Olympiad, it felt like I was about to die. and then I had to go through it again when the results got out. I didn’t go that far either way but looking back I was just comfortable with being number 2. just enough intelligence but not enough to put me in situations where I would feel anxious.

I still think about those days, days when I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal to feel that way. that it wasn’t normal to breakdown and cry when things didn’t turn out the way you set out for them to be (I recognise now that that was my first panic attack). if I hadn’t found what it’s called. had I not known that it’s a disorder? would I still be feeling the way I do? or am I exhibiting symptoms because I know and have learnt about what anxiety is??  

Anyway, I do not have time for an existential crisis. I am just tryna voice out how it feels like to live with anxiety.  which I am failing miserably at doing... the past couple of years have been worse, varsity and life are tag teaming me, and the results, well the results of that tag team can be spotted on my wrists and alcohol blood content almost every Friday back at school. See in high school, all that should have given me stress is school and boys but you know everything stressed me out. even Mondays. But I could escape, I could run away into a land of fictional characters and chick flick story lines. The society’s recommended way of escape.

but somehow, lately nothing has felt like an escape. I have an attention span the size of an elf so I don’t read or watch a lot of movies. I scroll through my phone aimlessly for the majority of time when I am not asleep and my absolute favourite lately, I stay up all night, sleep at 7am then rinse and repeat. a lot of times though, I put up a particularly good front. How good you may ask.... so good that 90% of people I tell don’t believe me when I tell them, that 80% of people who had the pleasure of witnessing the last big one, were shocked at how bad it could get. I was looking for a better word than surprised but I could only come up with shocked, I am using my last 2 braincells to write this don’t judge me.  the point I was tryna make was that it is never easy, especially when you are a strong young woman, you can never be anything else but strong.

Anxiety is stifling, it is suffocating, it like slowly reducing the amount of air a candle needs to stay lit, only you never know when you are finally in the vacuum. you never know when your brain is gonna let the air come right back in again. but when it does, that first inhale is sweet, it is glory but at the same time its frightening, you never know when next you’ll be in the vacuum. and that the worst part about anxiety, the unpredictability, the shock factor, but above all else, the lingering knowledge and feeling that at any moment it could happen, at any moment you could be gasping for air in a room full of strangers. so, you half ass life. live life on its terms. you go out less, talk to less people, interact less, say less, sleep on your bright ideas, your intelligence, silence your longing to be loved. because anxiety is ruthless, if it’s not on its terms then it gets messy. your very own jealous boyfriend.

not sure if this will ever see the light of day, I’m too anxious about this one.  if it ever does, I hope you like it. I, hope it makes you kinder to those with the disorder. I, hope you want to learn more about it. I hope you know you aren’t alone. 

love and light