My Anxiety Is on the Rise

I’ve taken about a month off from writing. I had to. My goal was to write a new blog every Wednesday, but I wasn’t aware of how much thinking it takes to do that weekly. The goal for starting this blog was so I could become a better writer while I work out my feelings. I felt if I shared my experiences that it would help me get better at writing, and, if somebody read my writings and got something from it, then it was a bonus. Unfortunately, it’s been hard to do any of that lately. The holidays came, and I didn’t attempt to go home to see my family. The thought of getting on a plane and having to deal with people at the airport or being dropped off and sitting next to somebody on an airplane or being locked in a capsule with possible coronavirus air just wasn’t appealing to me. The inability to be able to physically be in my family’s presence is starting to take a toll on me. A few people I know that have flown and told me I would be okay, but there’s so much false news in the world that I didn’t want to risk going home and getting my mother sick. I would much rather drink from a glass given to me by a stranger than take a chance with my mother’s health. The blues started to hit me in October right after my daughter’s birthday. Her birthday is right around the time when I get my mind prepared for the coming holidays.

To say this year has been a rough one would be an understatement. It’s taken me longer than I would like for me to get back into the flow of things. I’ve been overwhelmed by so many different things, and I try to write down everything, but the thought of writing what I’m feeling comes at me all at once and sends me into a panic. I’ll identify what I’m going through to recognize the trauma. Then I think about how I’m handling that trauma and want to write about the same exact trauma. There’s a part of me that forgets that I have to read that trauma back to myself. Doing all of that to get over the trauma is fucking trauma. Distracting myself with pedestrian activities to keep my mind busy and pretending that things aren’t bothering me by posting random images on Instagram to keep up appearances isn’t working anymore. I’ve done all I can to distract myself from the fact that I secretly want to poison myself for putting myself in the current position of not being stable enough to get through life. I tell myself it’s temporary, but how do I know I’m not pretending to believe that as well? I’m disgusted with the things that have happened to me during my childhood that were never addressed, things that robbed me of a life without trauma and prohibited me from growing as a person. I am furious that, because those things were not addressed, I have to take time out of my life now that I don’t have, time that could be better spent on doing something to create a stable living, to get help for what troubles me. I have to carve out time to work on healing and forgiving myself for being mean to myself. I am sick of me. I am sick of me being sick of me. My late friend Patrice O’Neal used to complain about how much he hated diabetes. He despised the fact that the disease forced him to think about everything he ate, and it took a toll on him. I’m in the same boat. I think about every action that I take, and I ask myself, “Am I doing it from a place of trauma or from a place of someone who has healed from that trauma?”

I could write an entire book about all the things that I am sick of when it comes to me. I’m sick of dealing with anxiety. I fucking hate anxiety. I hate that I know about anxiety. I hate that anxiety knows me. I hate that I didn’t know anxiety was the cause of things that I couldn’t explain when it was attacking me. I wish there was some way to give anxiety a physical form and arrest this motherfucker, make him stand trial, even though I know he’s already guilty, and lock him up forever. I would then throw away the key and put a dragon in front of the door to make sure he never got out.

I get overwhelmed with anxiety sometimes, and I simply shut down. Anxiety robs me of my time. Sometimes I’m completely unaware that life is still happening around me when I’m having my attack. I will come out of my anxiety-riddled panic attack thinking I’ve only been dealing with it for five minutes, but in actuality it’s been hours. I might sit on my couch for three or four hours doing nothing. The downside is that I’ll get mad at myself later for not getting anything accomplished during that time. I may walk around my place and decide on a home improvement project to do, which I will eventually become overwhelmed by, and that will cause me anxiety as well. I do all of that to avoid having to address something I don’t want to deal with. Anxiety is a virus. Anxiety needs to feed off of something to stay alive. Anxiety will make me focus on an area of my life that I’m confident in and attack it in order to find out what it would take to destroy it, and it will make me focus on that. Then, if or when I’m able to figure out how to destroy that area, my anxiety tells me that the area I thought I was confident about isn’t as strong as I thought it was, and it’s the reason why I’m not worth anything. 

The anxiety of rejoining society is the cause of my most recent panic attacks. I have to be honest, being locked down for this long has made the thought of going back outside into the world extremely unappealing to me. I haven’t struggled to survive as much as I thought I would, plus I’ve made adjustments so I don’t need as much as I once did. A lot of people won’t admit it, but we needed this downtime. We needed a break from the normal routine that was wearing us down. I felt like we were all on a treadmill going nowhere. I already had a certain disdain for the human race before the virus hit, but after watching how we have behaved during the virus, I’m even more disgusted. We can wash our hands and not touch our face for all of eternity, and we still won’t clean up how dirty we are when it comes to dealing with each other. It’s mind boggling to see humans treat each other the way we do. I don’t understand how and why humans can treat other humans as less than human.

During this entire pandemic, I have yet to understand why we as a people have not all agreed that we need to take a very long and much needed time-out. We’ve been trying to fly a kite in a tornado while trying to balance ourselves on a high wire that has snakes below it since March 13, 2020. I’ve mentioned to people that we should probably should shut the world down and let everybody catch their breath, and I’ve been told I was crazy or that my idea was unreasonable.

From a lot of the talks I’ve had, I’ve learned that some people are truly scared at the thought of slowing life down just to gather themselves long enough to pull it together. We have really been programmed to keep going no matter what. The sad part is they’re technically right, to a degree. It shouldn’t be that way, but this is the world we have created. Maybe I’m out of loop, but I need to know if we answer to a higher being that demands we work ourselves to death. I didn’t know there was a monster at the center of the earth that will come from below and kill us all if we don’t work our fingers to the bones.

As much damage this virus has caused, I have to be thankful and appreciate the good that has come from it. The virus revealed a lot about people that I probably would not have ever found out about, if I hadn’t gone through this quarantine. The virus squeezed extremely hard, but the juice that came from it has been worth it. Sometimes you have to give up something to get something. Other times, life will force you to give up something so it can make you get something you need.

Sitting at home and having all the time in the world to think about everything that has happened before and during, and what may happen after they find a vaccine, has really exposed how fucked up humans are, can be, and will probably continue to be. The human race really showed their true colors during this pandemic, and I don’t like these motherfuckers anymore. I don't believe there's a more self-centered or self-absorbed or self-righteous or self-entitled fucking organism on the planet quite like the human race. In my opinion, humans are the most inconsiderate species on Earth, and I don't care what color or race or made-up religion you are a part of, we are ass.

I secretly hope they never find a vaccination. I’m aware that way of thinking is selfish, but I’m not saying it to be selfish. I have no desire to see the 1%, the wealthy, or the people who decide who is worthy of a quality life, figure out how high people are willing to jump for the vaccination. You’ve seen it before. They’re going to make people decide how much you are willing to pay to stay alive. People can be so horrible.

Selfishly, I hope the numbers never decrease. I don’t do things to ensure my desire to stay inside, but I’ve given up on asking people to be safe so we can go outside. Having examined how despicable, selfish, and shitty humans are to each other, no part of me wants to go back outside. I’ve become comfortable with GrubHub and streaming sites. I’m content with taking my morning walks and evening jogs and limiting my amount of human interaction. This could be my anxiety overreacting, or it could be my anxiety showing me a safer way to get through life.

However, there’s this itch in the back of my mind that makes me wonder if getting me to not want to go outside again was the part of the plan. Now I’ll go deal with the anxiety of wondering if someone is trying to damage me psychologically. 

-EAT

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