anxiety & me: the greatest love story

One day I'll stop feeling this

It's been a week since I've felt this way, and granted I have felt this way for the past couple of months. I wish I could write about something other than heartache and bitterness and my own anxiety - but that doesn't seem possible right now.

Let's just say that if I could, I would. I guess that's a true challenge of trying to create content. If it was easy to push feelings aside and write about things I was passionate about, I would. Right now I'm struggling with ways to explain my anxiety to people on a way that doesn't sound like gibberish.

Anxiety is a struggle. I've dealt with anxiety for years, it consumes me most days and leaves me feeling like my skull is going to cave in on me. This is due to the thousands of things I worry about - and just when it seems like everything is in the clear, my throat might feel a little dry and my brain is suddenly convinced that somehow I am going to die.

I've been doing better - but there's only so many meditations that I can do to try to relax my mind before my brain sees right through what I'm trying to plot. That's how it feels sometimes, like my brain is plotting against me.

Does everyone else with anxiety feel this way? Is my anxiety similar to somebody else's? Is anxiety an individual thing? I'd really like to know.

"Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot" is a lyric from a Bright Eyes song called Easy/Lucky/Free. That's how like feels lately, like I've lost the plot points of my life and they're all just scattered in the corners of my brain somewhere. I want to reach into my skull a drag them out. If they stick in the corners for too long, they make me anxious.

I don't like being anxious, I don't like the thoughts that consume me. I don't like obsessing over stupid things. I don't like having to take medication in order to have some stability. I hate who there's a stigma on mental health.

I don't like being uncomfortable when speaking about this topic - but at the same time I don't want people to know about this. Once people know there's some kind of problem with you, that's when they start to distance themselves. That's when they start to judge. I just wish I had control, or more control than I already have.

On a Facebook post regarding the subject of anxiety I saw somebody mention that CBT therapy can sometimes make us feel TOO emotional. When we have put up a wall around ourselves for so long, often times we start to build up more reasons as to why we can't change things, and when things start to change and we recognize our feelings - that's when things get weird. I'm not sure how to handle all these things I'm feeling, but I'm really trying to do a better job than before.

With all of this happening I'm constantly being reassured by others that everything will be okay. Sure, I know that events in time this will be the case, but I don't feel this way right now - and after dealing with this for so many years, it's hard to picture a future where this might be the case.

I had a conversation recently with a friend recently in which she described me as "always a bit more mature, even at a young age."

I questioned this, because for the longest time 'mature' meant 'in-control.' I'm still not sure exactly what it means to be in control of myself, or my emotions. But I'm getting there, it's just going to be a difficult thing.

I don't want it to be a difficult thing. I don't want to be worried, or annoyed, scared or irritable. I'm sick of these feelings, and trying to recognize them or find meaning in them. I want to bundle all of them up into a ball and let them go - but no matter how many meditations I do, the thoughts still stick to the corners of my brain, and I can't claw them out.

I suppose it only gets weirder.

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