Let's Play the Anxiety Game!

First scenario:
You have put off preparing for French class because reviewing tenses and verb conjugations reminds you that you will be required to talk. It is now two hours before class and you need to get this done. Unfortunately, your racing heart prevents you from concentrating. (Your heart is racing because you went to another class this morning and the class, of course, contained people. You left to "get a drink of water" after fifteen minutes because you couldn't handle it, and when you came back you discovered that you had just missed an entire page of notes. This did not help matters.)

Do you:
a) stare at the email telling you what you need to review and will yourself to open your textbook?
b) curl up on your bed, eat a handful of Reese's Pieces, and hope this clears up in the next three minutes?
c) write a blog post to distract yourself and/or inject some humor into the situation?

* * *

If you chose A:
The words blur in front of your eyes and even though you're still looking right at the screen, you're pretty sure you have no idea what you just read. You do not open your textbook. What is wrong with you? [Panic increases]

If you chose B:
This isn't working. This isn't working. And oh look, now you're eating your feelings, apparently. You can't afford to do this right now. You're running out of time. Oh god, how long is it going to be like this? Are you seriously going to freak out every time you have to leave your dorm room? How are you going to do anything? How are you going to be any good to anyone? [Panic increases]

If you chose C:
You format the post like a choose-your-own adventure sort of thing, and it works as a distraction for a little while. [Panic decreases] Until, that is, you realize that you've spent fifteen minutes writing the post instead of studying and that you have to go order some pizzas for the choir picnic in a few minutes, which means that now you're going to be woefully under-prepared for class. And also the choir picnic will involve interacting with people and probably participating in ice-breakers, which seem to be tailor-made to trigger social anxiety. At this point your hands are shaking so badly you can barely type. [Panic increases] [PANIC INCREASES]


Second scenario:
You are--

You know what? I don't want to play this game anymore. Stop it just stop it I am so tired of this.

It’s easy to be unaware of the depth of terror when you are not faced with the thing you fear. It’s hard to articulate when your heart is pounding. Hard to write when your hands shake. Writing about this is hard. Four sentences in, I’m not sure it’s something I can do.

Over the summer, I saw no one. There was nothing to stop me from leaving the house only to work or to take walks alone. Nothing to stop me from retreating from my family—a thing I wasn’t even aware of doing until a friend who lives miles away and saw my summer only through my writing pointed it out. There were a few exceptions. Meetings, interactions I consented to out of guilt or obligation. Both, really. The extreme, irrational reluctance with which I faced those should have told me. It didn’t.

I don’t know why this has happened. What I know is that I barely made it through the first day of classes yesterday. That acting normal in the face of an overwhelming urge to bolt from a room that contains more than one or two people is a supreme act of will. Speaking above half-volume is not to be mentioned. Speaking at all is not to be mentioned. The cafeteria is torture. I left a meeting room full of interesting, lively, creative people last night, went back to my dorm, and dropped the class because an hour of fighting back tears was enough to let me know working on the lit magazine staff is no longer something I can do. What I know is that just writing down the facts like this has me on the verge of a fucking panic attack. And that I will have to do it again tomorrow. All of it.

I don’t know how.

I cannot understand, cannot come to terms with the fact that going to class is apparently too much for me, that I fear people but I cannot be left alone. I have always lived with fear like this, but I haven’t been so helpless in the face of it for years.

I have to do it again tomorrow. I have to do my fucking homework. I can’t speak, I can’t answer emails, I can’t I can’t I can’t.

What I will do, I don’t know, but this can’t continue. I cannot afford for it to continue. Explaining it like this is a victory, I guess, but it doesn’t feel like one and I don’t know how I can even say I want to speak when everything I have is conspiring to keep me silent.

Reasons to Give Up

My mother tells me to my face that she generally does not believe I am a “full person.” I do not react. I switched myself off when I walked into her apartment.

The list of people I have let down appears to be growing longer. I am remaining in people’s good graces purely through a reputation based on characteristics I am apparently no longer able to even feign.

The silence is unbreakable, but I am not.

I hurt myself even though no one wants me to do anything besides stop.

I finish nothing, attempt nothing, trust nothing.

Everything that comes into my head twists into the worst possible thing,

just like I have a gallery in my head of shots I missed because I wasn’t quick enough, or brave enough, or prepared enough. Just like the larger it gets, the less desire I have to even pick up my camera.

Just like everything that goes wrong somehow ends up being a reason to not try to do it right.

I think I would rather make a list of reasons to keep going, but it would take all night. It would be so long.

Be Careful Who You Tell Your Dreams To

I said I was “pretty definite” about not wanting to die, but I lied. I do not think that is something I can be definite about—not usually and certainly not these days. I cannot picture any part of the future. I cannot picture myself. This “future,” this life, supposedly “mine,” is a blank; I have run out of ink with which to write on it. I am not definite about walking forward into the void. 

But I am definite about time. There are things that I know. I know that time passes whether I think I can live or not, and that these currents take me places I never thought I would go. I know that the Earth, the sun, the dance of our days—all these things are roughly circular, and we are always and never coming home. I know that the day I decided I would not kill myself lies glinting on the top of the handful of other days around which I cup my hands and close my fingers tight, despite the agony and the silence that I keep. When I arrive at work still searching for a single good thing in myself and unable to find even one, the children still run to meet me, calling out my name. I have not lost everything—only the things I thought I couldn’t afford to lose. I can’t go back, I’m afraid to move forward, but listen. My heart’s still beating.

I guess you can say I’m not definite about wanting to live. I’m only definite about living.