I would like to start off this post by saying that I have anxiety issues.
Anxiety.
There, I said it. I said one of those words that so many of us are afraid of, myself included. We're scared of things like OCD, and depression, and anxiety (just to name a few). And I think we're scared because as humans we're naturally control freaks to a certain degree. We have these bodies that we're in, and these brains and hearts and other organs that function, and with that we sort of assume that we should be in control of them at all times. By admitting to having some sort of mental illness to that degree, we sort of admit that we don't always have that control, and that's scary.
Anxiety is wading. It doesn't just leave and go away forever. It's this demon that you sort of have to battle, and it improves, and gets worse, and really just goes through the motions depending on what's going on in your life. I've had dark times where my anxiety crippled me to a point where I didn't want to do anything, where I came to terms with the fact I was this anxiety ridden misfit who wouldn't accomplish anything because he was scared of everything. I've also had the polar opposite where my anxiety hadn't touched me in months, and that was the case up until recently.
A lot of my anxiety is caused by a fear of feeling ill, and by fearing that, I end up feeling ill as a result of the anxiety. Now, I hadn't gotten sick in quite a few years, three years in fact, so my anxiety about that had gotten to a point of near non-existence. But that came to a grinding halt recently when in the first week of December I ended up getting really ill, on top of having one of my best friends leave for two years, in which I can have very little contact with him. It sort of came out of no where, and I soldiered through it, but it sort of brought back that anxiety because it brought me back down to earth about the fact that I can get sick, and it reminded me of just have damn awful it can be.
I'm also a part time germaphobe; a word which my computer refuses to recognize as legitimate, but it's real. That germaphobia made me really crazy about things at one point about 2 years back. I had gotten rid of some anxiety, but I replaced it by constantly hand sanitizing, and just not even touching things while being out; I became Howie Mandel when he actually had hair.
So as I was saying, I got sick, I also got better. I was super ill the Friday it started, and by Saturday I was already eating lots of crackers and going through quite a few water bottles. But I knew that once I got better, the creeping fear of getting sick would come back. Thing is though, it wasn't so much a fear of getting sick again, as much as it was the fear of fearing getting sick again.
I've said this repeatedly, but I'm a big believer that the #1 issue within anxiety is the fear of having the anxiety. You enter such a dark place when you're going through the anxiety attacks, a much darker place than when you're sick with a 12 hour bug.
So I've been struggling. I've been struggling with the reemergence of my anxiety to a degree, and somehow trying to find a way to get past that. And I write all of this stuff not for people to go "Oh, poor you" or anything like that. I don't want that, I don't like people feeling sorry for me. I'm typing all of this stuff because I feel it's important to make public one's issues with mental illness. Even if it doesn't spur someone else to go and write about their issues (snowball effect), it does show people that there are others out there dealing with these issues, and that they're not alone at all.
I also take this comfort in writing. It's like a warm blanket for me. Maybe because I'm keeping my fingers moving while my whole body wants to crumble under the pressure of anxiety. Maybe because by making my brain process everything, it helps it realize that we all deal with these things, and that this is just one instance of it.
But I really take comfort in it, and I can't even explain properly how much having the ability to write means to me.
I've learned that I really know myself. I know myself to a very deep level that I trust my gut on almost every first gut feeling I get. I know what I like, I know who I like. But what I struggle with is understanding myself. While I may know things, I don't really understand how or why I am a certain way, just as we don't understand why others act a certain way. I sometimes feel like I'm a total stranger to myself, because (like with the onset of anxiety) I can go from one guy who has the whole game working for him with no worries, to this guy who is having regular anxiety attacks again.
I also know what I want to be, but I can't understand why I have such a difficult time accomplishing getting there, being that person. I like who I am, I really do. When I was in high school I didn't like myself, and therefore it made it hard for others to like me, because I was always molding myself to what I thought everyone wanted me to be, but you can't please everyone. So in the course of being out of school between leaving school and entering college, I really learned to like myself and appreciate who I am and my journey. At the same time though, I really wish I could care less about things like getting sick, like how others treat me, like different relationships and hardships I carry.
But alas, I am who I am; and maybe that's one of the biggest keys to happiness and learning not to care so much, is just total acceptance. Maybe we need to accept that we aren't always in control of our thoughts. Maybe we need to accept that we aren't always who we want ourselves to be. Maybe we need to understand that sometimes, we just don't understand; and that's okay.
Understanding and accepting are two totally different things. But if you can somehow understand AND accept that you're an ever evolving person, thrown into this world with other evolving people, maybe we can come to terms with the fact that perfection isn't a reality.
Life is this beautiful mess of screw-ups and accomplishments. It's punching your fist into a wall out of frustration, then in the future punching the air like Tiger Woods when you just accomplished something you never thought possible.
I need to get back to embracing those lows, because I know more highs are on the way.
