So, I heard you want to understand the pains and the frustrations of anxiety.
Okay. Let me give this a shot . . .
Let me see if I can make this clear, at least from a subjective point of view.
I have chosen to address my ideas about my past as well as my future. I have been here before. In fact, I’m sure there will be times when I return and, of course, there will be times when I come back again for the same reasons.
Some people might say this is the benefits of journaling.
I agree.
However, I have come here to speak to you.
That’s all.
I have come here to be honest, open and fully transparent. To offer this in full disclosure, I am going to explain myself to the best of my ability with hopes to connect, or to make sense or, at minimum, I want to create a truthful understanding between us.
Then again, I’m sure you already knew this.
I come here to expose myself which is why I built this special place for us. I have built this little studio in my head which, as I type, I am currently undergoing a renovation because, of course, life is changing. Hence, so are my situations and thus, I have to act and prepare and adjust myself accordingly.
So if you can pardon me and my renovations, for now, I’d like to continue as normal.
I’m here to talk about both the easy and the hard, the joy and pain, and the fears and the unsightly and more, I come here to voice my concerns. I’m here because this place was built with safety features in mind.
So, we can talk here. And no one knows this.
We can openly address the things that no one ever feels safe to expose or discuss.
Okay?
I come here because where else can we go to feel safe, or where else could we talk and have an open discourse or connection?
I come here to create a conversation because, in fairness, I don’t know where I’d be (without you).
I designed this invisible studio to act like a fallout shelter, to help me stop the spinning thoughts, and to keep my lonesomeness from creating the monsters in my head.
I want to stop the random destruction of minefield thoughts which explode and destroy my hopes without detonation.
And I guess the real question is, am I crazy.
Okay, maybe I am.
Aren’t we all (at least a little)?
Maybe I’m crazy because I want to understand the things which come without explanation. Maybe I’m crazy because I want to stop the unstoppable or solve the unsolvable. Maybe I’m crazy because deep down, I know better, but intellect and emotion are not on the same page.
This means that although I might understand something from an intellectual standpoint, emotionally, I want to find an understandable accountability for a pain or unresolved tension or discomfort. So long as there’s a feeling or a misunderstanding, I’ll want to understand why. Hence, I’ll look to assign blame to understand—and even then, I’ll never be free until the time “when” the emotional quicksand is finished drowning me.
This is what it’s like to live with my anxiety disorder.
This is why suicidal thoughts or ideation comes along and seeps through the unwanted cracks to expose the disgust of our unfortunate wrinkles and thus, this deforms our version of who we really are.
This is why beautiful people might think that they are ugly—it’s the unseeable bullshit that tangles us in knots.
I have banged my head against the same wall and fallen while walking down the same streets. I’ve done these enough times to learn my lesson. Yet somehow, there I am, from time to time. Falling for the same tricks. Falling victim to the same predator. Falling in the same holes, and banging my head again, or beating myself up for being where I am (again) instead of being where I want to be. . .
My disorders assume that there’s a lining around me; and there always has been.
I assume there always seems to be layer between us, keeping me distant, or there is something, some object or some unforeseeable item, or if nothing else, maybe I’m “just” crazy because life has a way of getting between us. So, we lose sight of what we really want to do.
We forget to let ourselves go, or to blow off steam—and maybe I’m crazy because I lose my way sometimes and, in turn, I freak out!
If we are going for truth and transparency, maybe I’m still that little kid, afraid of the dark, yet I’m a grown man now.
This means that I’m not supposed to be afraid of such things anymore.
So?
To go forward, I have discussed the who, the what, the why and the where in different journals. However, this journal is about the when, as in “The Book of When?” and to understand the term and the connotation of the word, we have to understand the definition, which I have mentioned before—but hey, today is a new day.
When, as in what time or depending upon what circumstances . . .
But there are different and figurative meanings behind the word.
“When,” can mean a thing or an impending item or an upcoming situation like, say, the fear of an unknown moment, or a problem with an unknown and unforeseeable outcome.
“When” can be this dark and lingering item in our life and so, we take on the irrational fears and the unfair assumptions that, of course, “Something wicked this way comes!”
I remember being at school and having the fears of meeting up for a fight after 3:00 in the schoolyard. I remember the associations, the memories and the fears which tie my nerves like knots and weave me into old assumptions of the worst possible scenarios. I remember the days when the rumor factories and the gossip mills were alive and well.
I remember the dread of Monday mornings and home room class before the day began. I recall how the spread of an unkind word and an unkind story blew through the hallways like a ghostly bullet.
I remember the souls left behind after the character assassination took place and how the gossip mills and the locker room talks would devour someone’s reputation and chew them up and then spit out the discarded remnants of someone who was socially ruined or destroyed.
I remember the cancel culture before there was such a thing. Yes, I was part of the chain and part of the problem and, of course, I was food for the beasts in this burden.
However, more than the truth or more than accounting for my wrongs and my sins and more than the sought redemption or the semblance of sanity, I am writing to you about the objects of “when” in relation to anxiety and irrational fear.
Sometimes, there’s nothing worse than impending doom. There’s nothing worse than the projections which come and the fears of the unknown and then, we tend to fall victim to our assumptions.
We sink below and submerge into the swamps of our fears and hence, we are drawn in and sucked away, like the undertow from angry waves that pull us from the unstable shorelines. This is the wild current that drags us away into the angry seas of the perceived dangers which trigger our fear response.
This is anxiety at its midrange.
This is not even anxiety at full speed.
Ever have an anxiety attack?
Ever find yourself in a fit of panic based on stress?
Every think yourself into the worst possible scenario and, at the moment, all you can do is try your best not to freak out.
All you can do is try to keep yourself from jumping out of your skin—and you want to. You want to escape.
Or you want to “jump out of it,” as if to find an “out” and to get away or, at minimum, even if you could only disappear or vanish, as if to never be, or to have never taken place to begin with—or if not, just to become absent from the void or the uselessness of a wrong move—and essentially, to be free or redeemed by the cancelation of time and minutes, emotions and yes, to disappear, to vanish from feeling, to escape the past or the future, —and with regards to the different stations of “When,” there are times when the clock ticks and the seconds move like a cruel snail. Unfortunate time is slow as ever and, essentially, all you can do is wait for the hell to break lose.
It’s like a criminal awaiting the deliberation of the jury or the sentencing from the judge. Life or death? Imprisonment? The sting of hard, cruel and unusual punishment?
What’s on the menu, folks?
Pain?
Anguish?
Shame?
Or is it the degradation of humiliation?
What’s on the docket for today?
What does the judge have in store?
What are the people going to say?
What’s going to happen when I arrive?
Who will be waiting, just to point out my flaws?
Who will hurt me?
Who will expose me?
Who will laugh at me and break my heart?
When will I know?
When will I find out about my fate?
And when is it going to be safe to calm down.
God, please . . .
This is my association with my anxiety disorder.
And no, I can’t tell people about this –
outside of here, that is.
I go back to my favorite quote:
Never in the history of calming down
Has anyone EVER calmed down
Simply by being told
to calm down . . .
“You’re gonna be okay, son.”
I hope so, Pop. I just don’t want to feel like I let you down
(again).
I just want to be good again
You know?
I want to be happy like that picture I was telling you about when I was praying to you.
I do know, son
And . . .
You are.
You’re more than you think.
Thanks, Pop.
I needed that.
The Written Addiction 