Living with anxiety.
I wouldn’t know how to be ‘normal’ if I tried. Sometimes it’s not my set alarm that wakes me up in the morning but the friendly reminder from my anxiety that I need to get up and get things done.
The problem with living with anxiety is that you can’t escape it. It’s at the back of your mind everyday. Just when you think you’re in the clear, it grabs your hand and walks with you throughout your whole day. Some days it’s so bad I can’t get out of my own head. Anxiety is living in your own head and never living in the present moment. You’re worrying about the future or worrying about the past and can’t seem to pause and look around in the now. Sometimes this can be a good thing, you have a little drive a little buzz from the thoughts inside your brain and this can be used as motivation . But sometimes this little buzz becomes a big buzz and gets extremely overwhelming. On those days it’s hard to even get the simplest task done because everything is so overwhelming and cloudy and you can’t even think without feeling a sense of panic. I see all the words, all my chores and responsibilities floating in my head and I’m standing there trying to catch atleast one but it slips out of my hand and it leaves me there feeling helpless, chaotic and like I’m not in control. I sit back and observe the thoughts swirling around. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed I just jump back into bed and force myself to go to sleep to try ease the mind.
Other days I let my anxiety turn into anger because I can’t quite pin point how I’m truely feeling and I let the anger control my mood instead of just saying I’m struggling and need help. Some days the anxiety sits in my stomach and that makes it extremely hard to eat and drink and get anything down that will help fuel my body. Some days the anxiety creeps up the back of my throat and it makes me feel like I can’t breath.
No matter how I’m feeling and if my anxiety is a good day or a bad day I sit in the mirror and paint on a big smile and try to hide and push through all the internal struggles I’m facing. I get on with my day and smile but not let anyone in too much because I don’t want them to see that, well I’m really not doing okay. I see my friends and I see my peers. I say something, then I overthink it for the rest of the day. If someone feels a bit off I try to work out in my head what I’ve done, does this person not like me anymore? Did I say something to upset them? It’s an internal struggle with the mind and with reality. Sometimes I struggle to distinguish between what’s ‘real life’ and what’s just going on in my head. I brave it, I face it alone with my friend anxiety. Sometimes I journal in the morning or in the evening to try make sense of what’s going on in my head. But on the hard days I struggle to even put to pen in paper what’s going on in my mind. I try to take deep breaths, I try to sleep but if I’m being honest with you on those bad days no matter how much I try, I lose the fight and the anxiety wins. It’s not all bad days, sometimes I can quieten the mind and some days I hardly feel anxious or just get anxious about normal things like the traffic or if I have an assignment due. But the truth is I can’t pick and choose when the bad days come. The point I’m trying to make is honestly sometimes it sucks and sometimes I feel alone with my own thoughts and don’t want to let anyone in. Sometimes I brave it alone and feel really overwhelmed. Then I think of all the people who also struggle. I observe strangers on the street or on the bus and then I wonder how many other people are feeling this way. I suddenly don’t feel alone and I understand this is hard, this is an illness and it should be talked about more. Not just in the sense of this is what people go through. I feel like if you don’t live with anxiety everyday you’ll never truely understand by just seeing a poster . It’s the raw, it’s the hard truth that people need to know about.
Alesha
