FREEZE!

You're at a gunpoint. 10 officers around you. A chopper over your head; 5 police cars surrounding you. Lights are blaring all on you from every angle, blinding you. Your heart is racing, and you just want to run for you know, here, there is no fight. You'll be shot. Your heart is inside your lungs pumping blood instead of oxygen and your head is full of gas and just about to explode. You can go nowhere, you can't flee. You'll be shot. Your legs are giving up, your soul is leaving your body and you're on autopilot. Your feet are cold, but your neck is sweaty, and your back is almost drenched. Your joints feel loose but your heart weighs the same as the sinking Titanic. You can hardly breathe.

You freeze.

What can you do with that many officers, all guns at you and a chopper overhead? Nothing. You freeze. You stop in your tracks and you surrender.

Except, the police, the gun, the cars and the choppers are unseen forces acting on you, a manifestation of your fears (rational or irrational, doesn't matter - they're fears still.)

Welcome.

I visualized you an anxiety attack.

That is exactly what an anxiety attack feels like.

But why am I writing about an anxiety attack? Why is it relevant right now?

Well, I faced a situation today where I couldn't, after trying, leave - neither flee nor fight.

I don’t want to go into details, but it entailed me signing a rental contract which I hadn’t intended to sign but ended up signing it because I do not, I do not cope well under pressure and after being asked the same thing a few times over and over, I give in and I did the same today. I couldn’t fight my anxiety off - it froze me and I ended up taking a decision I would have battled had I been in a ‘normal’ frame of mind. There is no blaming anyone here, just my anxiety and myself.

A younger me would make a joke out of this situation to cope and go along with my decision, no matter how deeply it screwed up my current state because I was just too scared to make another move because I've already made one dumb one, and say don't be a fool like me. But I know better today this isn't something to joke and laugh off and not work to fix. Having anxiety is abnormal. It is abnormal and it's a health issue. It's not a personality problem - it's not that light. I'm not writing this to tell you, hey I have anxiety give me a break. My anxiety is not an excuse for me.

But me writing about it, is me acknowledging anxiety is not normal. It's something that needs to be fixed and I need help fixing it. I had my boyfriend today to calm me down afterward (thanks!) but I won’t have someone every time I have an anxiety break and I have to learn to fend it off because at some point it will consume me instead.

At stressful times like that, you don’t remember to breathe. And even if you do, your worries about the person in front of you are too big for recouping - what will they think if I suddenly start breathing heavily? What if I inconvenience them? Would I look stupid?

And these fears may be true, or they may be false, I can never know because I only know to worry and fear and not counter my thoughts.

But I have to change it.

I am only writing this as acknowledgement that my anxiety exists as an abnormal entity that continues to impair my daily life occurrences and while support is always welcome (kudos to the all supporting man I got) it’s something that needs overcoming for no one can live like this. I can’t live on making brash decisions all my life.

I think anti-stigmatizing mental health has come too far as to normalizing it and I think it's doing the opposite of what it's supposed to do. My anxiety has led to make brash choices out of impulse and continues to impair daily life and makes it much, much, much more difficult everyday to go about...

I worry about the simplest things in life and take them to their heightened peak, so far away from what it initially was that I lose track of my original fear and am left with this twisted understanding of my environment.

I'm not here to inspire anyone, or belittle anyone. I'm simply here to say problems exist but problems need resolution. Anxiety needs resolution, because it dramatizes a simple situation in my head and overshadows all my intellect. I make stupid choices despite having calculated the ins and outs of of all my choices available to me.