I've noticed that some people have put me on a bit of a pedestal. They think that I've made it. They think that I'm "normal". That I'm some savior that has things figured out. They imagine it's about time for me to sit back, relax, settle into my "groove" and ride my horse off into the sunset.
I guess I can understand why. My life looks easy from the outside. And my life is truly easy in a lot of ways! I eat what I want when I want. I write when I want. I work on projects that are engaging, stimulating, and get my blood boiling hot but in a good way. I don't worry too much about finances because I make enough money and I'm also not the type who wants to go out and blow all of his money on a yacht (although spending it all on cocktails is a distinct possibility). I'm young, healthy, and fit (but not fit enough!). I laugh way more than some people would like and when I see that people aren't enjoying my antics I tend to laugh even harder. Fate has made me the beneficiary of a lot of privileges that others may not have been so lucky to have bestowed upon them. I am happier than I have ever been and I MEAN that. If you think I'm lying to manipulate you then you might want to learn how to quit pathologizing me and figure out how to integrate the principle of charity into how you perceive people.
All that is true and good and wholesome, yes. But listen closely to me now. Pay attention. Discard your presumptions, get the hell out of your own mind and step into my world for a moment. DO NOT CREATE A BELIEF THAT I DO NOT SUFFER.
Believe me, I do.
My anxiety is crippling. In fact, it's so crippling I have trouble leaving my apartment on some days. I'll pace back and forth, gnawing on the skin close to my fingernails, by myself, trying to find the courage to go into the world and do something. Some days I have to get myself physced up just to do a simple thing like go out and grab some fast food where I'll only be outside in public for five minutes. I like to use the backdoor to get into my apartment so I can avoid having to speak with anyone gathered in the lobby. I talk to myself in the mirror. I write notes to myself and encourage myself to be strong. It is very difficult for me to meet new people and enjoy new things because all new things and people make me uncomfortable and I don't like the feeling of being uncomfortable. I think way too much about everything. I have trouble focusing on anything unless I exercise some real effort.
And do you want to know what the worst part is? Actually, you probably don't want to know but I'll tell you anyway. I know that all my suffering is mine to own. Even if I tried to blame someone else for it, that won't fix it. If someone else burns my house down and I spend all my time and energy capturing the arson, I will have found someone to blame, be angry at, and exact my revenge on and that might make me feel good for a moment but in the long run I will still be left with a pile of ashes at my feet.
And yes, I hear your protests. How can it be that I come to work and do something productive almost every day if, at the same time, I also struggle with the issues of leaving my apartment and wanting to avoid interacting with people? How indeed. This is what works for me: I turn everything into a battle. For example, I usually wake up in the morning thinking about how scary work is because that's when my groggy brain starts to remember that I'm working on something that's complicated and challenging for me. I'll probably have to talk to people I don't know. I'll probably have to tell my manager something that he might not want to hear. I'll probably have to admit to someone smarter, wiser, and older than me that I don't know something that I should probably know. I'll probably say something that makes me look weird. All of that is most certainly going to happen throughout the work day. So you see, EVERY SINGLE DAY starts out in a negative way for me because it really hasn't even begun and I am already thinking about all the scary things I'll have to do! So how do I overcome myself in those moments where I start to think about all the things that make me apprehensive (which is everything, keep in mind)? I make myself do what I don't want to. I square myself away. I make my bed. I take a shower. I brush my teeth. I make sure I'm dressed up sharp. But how then, do I make myself do things I don't want to do? I imagine that I'm a warrior waging a glorious war of attrition against the part of myself that makes me want to curl into a ball and hide in the corner when I notice the papers starting to pile up on my kitchen table. I believe I can win the war too! The war I wage against myself excites me for whatever reason. I don't waste any more time wondering if that's a good or bad thing. So when I make my bed in the morning, I prove to my ever skeptical self that I can be victorious in the small things. And I feel it somewhere in my heart that if I can be victorious in the small things then there's TRUE hope that I can be victorious in the challenging things. I allow myself to feel pride about these simple things. I've changed my perspective from thinking that these things are petty or beneath me to think instead that these little victories are the corner-stones to every successful day.
But learning how to appreciate the little victories isn't easy and I'm still in the fledgling stages of learning how to do that. Changing my mindset to be one where I feel good about doing little things well is a process, and it has not been something that I have learned about quickly and put into practice right away.
I can understand how to others my brain can seem like a scary organ placed inside of a scary person. It's violent. It's angry. Sometimes it gets filled with enemies and hatred. It wants to destroy things. In fact, if I take a close look at my writing, I realize that almost all of it is fueled by my desire to pit notions and ideas against each other and watch them destroy each other on the battlefields in and between human minds. Some will judge that this way of conceptualizing things is unhealthy.
I pose to those people these questions: What is normal? What is healthy? Who should decide? Who can say if I am happy or not? I have decided that the only person fit to answer these types of questions is one person. That person is me. I have decided that only I can determine how healthy my mind is, because I'm the only one who has any real insight into how it actually perceives things and how that affects my behavior.
I think some people are confused about my happiness because I don't express it in the way that most people are used to. My happiness is in a deviant smirk. It's in a scowl. It's in a grunt or yell. It's in a belly laugh that feels like it splits my soul in two. It's in a debate or argument. It's in a warm feeling that I feel somewhere inside but that I don't wear on my face when I look back at a pile of wood I've stacked together neatly.
Some of you will see my accomplishments and think that I must be lying about my emotional turmoil in some weird power move where I want to gather sympathy from you because someone who gets things done like I do must have a "normal", "healthy" mind (whatever that means) that can't be afflicted by such a high level of anxiety, anger and nervousness. If that is what you are thinking, you have some serious reflection to do on your conclusion about my ability to be honest.
Some of you also don't want to believe that my mind operates in this way. Some of you see a good person who tries to do his best and you think that my behavior must be reflective of a mind that thinks wholesome thoughts and that conjures up only good deeds for me to execute on. I'm telling you that if you think that, you are telling yourself a comfortable lie.
Now why am I writing this? Why am I telling you so much about my anxiety and how I deal with it?
Listen, I'm aware not everyone deals with the high level of anxiety that I do. Most of this writing won't make a lot of sense to most people. I get that. I understand that people are born with different personality traits and I'm not claiming that the best way to handle things is to turn your issues into battles like I have.
Despite that, I still hope that if I tell you these things and that if you are feeling like a little lost anxious unworthy person that maybe, somewhere in this mess of a mind that I've splattered onto paper, you can take a look inside of my head and perhaps you'll see something that you need to do for yourself to stay in the fight. There is hope for you to feel happy. There is hope for you that you can put your life together. But you have to take up the sword and start to fight. Starting will be the hardest part. And even after you start, if you have a mind similar to mine, you might have to accept the fact that you will never exist in a world that's all sunshine and rainbows.
I have discovered that it is possible to take a seemingly strange sort of comfort in being content with that fact.