On Anxiety...

It's a bitch.

I'll preface this entry by saying that my anxiety decreased exponentially when Loestrin left my life. And good riddance to THAT crap.

I'll also note that I have a mind that never stops. It keeps me up late for no reason, despite how exhausted my body is. It snowballs ideas until they become something terrifying. It's basically the epitome of the "scumbag brain" meme.

So for the past two and a half years or so, I've been trying to battle anxiety with a brain that refuses to do so. It would get to the point where I could be doubled over in pain because I couldn't deal with anything that was going on around me. I never wanted to leave my apartment, but at the same time, every time I stayed in for a weekend I felt incredibly alone. Go ahead and try to take on intense anxiety on your own. It doesn't work.

All this leads to anxiety boiling up inside you until you think your body might actually physically fall apart. It leads to what Holly Golightly referred to as the "mean reds."

I've always thought the best horror movies keep some things hidden so that your imagination can fill in the blanks. Often what you yourself come up with is much more terrifying than what a filmmaker can portray on screen. So try applying that to your real life, and not being able to fill in the blank.

In the past couple months, I've been really proud of how I've kept my anxiety under control. I no longer have to curl up in a tense ball and wait for the wave of worries to wash over me. I can take a deep breath a dissect a problem rather than hide from it. But every so often it comes sneaking back into my life and brings with it self-doubt and fear. It doesn't manifest itself as physical pain anymore, but it does show up as annoying foot tapping, constantly needing to have something in my hands or just dropping out of reality to zone out and get through it while in public.

I'm not sure why I've decided to write about all of this now. It's therapeutic in a way, but I don't want people to be worried about me. More than anything, I want to know when and how it goes away. What do I need to do to turn my mind off for one night? And does anxiety ever really leave your life, or do we all just keep ourselves distracted until it slowly fades away? The thought of how long it could take to go away just makes me more anxious.

Other things that have changed in the past couple months: the things causing me anxiety will be good for my future regardless of how they turn out. First time that's happening in about...two years? I'll keep you posted on where it all goes.