Sure.
Of course, I know what anxiety is.
Who doesn’t?
Anxiety and I go back like an old man’s reclining chair.
Know what I mean?
We go back a long time, and yet, most of most absolute fears that spawned from my anxiety did not come true. That is of course, unless I allowed myself to satisfy my own prophecies.
This is why I say the mind is a funny thing.
And so are the ideas that go to the worst extremes, which to be clear; this is what anxiety is to begin with.
Those crazy ideas or the irrational concepts are the glue traps that the mind holds and refuses to let go.
That’s anxiety.
I get that.
I can understand how these concerns lead a person to lose their mind.
God knows, I’ve lost my mind more than once. In fact, I am sure that I lose my mind, both daily and frequently, as if this were an avid talent of mine.
But of course, there are greater talents to have and better ways to see ourselves.
But anxiety is like that unfair practical joker from grade school, slipping thumbtacks, facing upwards on the teacher’s chair.
(And no, I can neither confirm nor deny executing such pranks like this and therefore, I will exercise my right to remain silent and thus; any questions of this nature would have to solely be directed to my attorney, The famous and excellent, Mr. Neal Brickman)
Anxiety is a waste.
I have lost money. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost loved ones and I have lost time and energy to this.
I have lost to my anxiety and depression like water loses to a drain.
But worst of them all; I can see how I have lost myself and my mind in the toxic swamps of emotional quicksand.
Sinking slowly and drowning in thin air.
By the way, there is a word for this.
Absolutely, there is.
There is a word is commonly used and yet, the word and the meaning is frequently overlooked.
And so, for the record; the word is “human.”
Yes, “human.”
It is human to have concern or to worry, —even if the worries are far-fetched and irrational; this is absolutely human.
I used to think that maybe I was crazy. I thought that maybe I was too far gone or that somewhere, somehow, someone is going to pull the curtain on me and next, I will be uncovered.
Next, the entire world is going to catch me, like some kind of imposter, dressing the part, but not good enough.
I would be exposed, no different from the time the second grade lunch lady humiliated me in the lunch room for wetting my pants and yelling at me, out loud.
My biggest fear is that I am going to be unmasked and seen as nothing more than weak or ineffective and worse, undesireable.
And the funniest part about this is also sad.
I explain this because there are people in my life who knew about these truths.
They knew about my fears. They knew about my childhood and what happened.
And they happily told my deepest darkest secret, as if this were a great victory for them.
Sure, expose someone’s molested youth.
what a great loving thing to do –
They told about my weaknesses. They knew about my struggles too, —and I mean the darker ones or the challenges that caused me to pause or literally freeze with anticipation and fear.
They knew about the suicidal nature. And what did they do?
They told our common enemies because the enemy of my enemy is now my friend.
(Ain’t that right?)
And here’s the bitch about that.
And this is the biggest bitch of them all.
I swear,
Oftentimes, the people who held a high or even the highest position in our lives are often the ones who turn on us and expose our cracks in the façade. And they do this with a smile. They tell the world and scream from the rooftops to spotlight your weaknesses.
Not everyone is destined to be together forever and yes, the frequent splits and “fallings-out” between people can lead to hateful bitterness. I agree.
And I can dig it.
I’ve been mad before.
I’ve been hurt too.
I can dig the fact that people can or will be ugly when they are hurt enough.
But again, who wants to be ugly?
I suppose hell hath no fury like anyone scorned.
I agree.
Have I been scorned?
Have I been wounded?
No more (or less) than the next person on line at the store.
We all get the shit-end of the stick sometimes.
The type of person I want to be is this:
I want to be the kind of person who can still keep a secret, even after the friendship has ended, and the battle has begun.
I have heard people curse me, or they cursed my future and wished the worst.
They wished for me to fail or die or fall harder than I have ever fallen before.
This is true.
There are times when I wonder about these curses.
Or maybe they are like hexes, for lack of a better term.
I wonder if the tails I pulled or the games I played and the bullets I dodged are all about to hit me at the same time.
And maybe . . .
Maybe there is something waiting for me.
Maybe this is why I always tell people that I’m never concerned when my enemy sneers or growls or shows me their middle finger.
No, this does not concern me.
This is what enemies do.
But I’ll say this –
I do pay attention when an enemy smiles at me, like say, when my enemy gives me a smile and a nod, for example.
It’s a sign that there’s something in the mail.
Speaking of the mail . . .
I used to be that kid who’d get letters sent home from school.
Sometimes, these letters would come from teachers.
Sometimes, they would come from counselors or maybe the letters would be write-up slips about my frequent behavioral problems and my avoidance when it came to serving time in after-school detention.
I never went to detention . . . and so, the next step was called in-school suspension, or I.S.S.
I.S.S. sucked!
This is when I had to sit in a little room the entire day. I could not leave, or speak.
I had to sit there; and I just sat in a little cubicle and did my schoolwork.
I had to sit in a cubicle in a small office, down by the principal’s office.
I’d skip out on this too because “fuck that!”
This led to the next step, which was home suspension, which led to both a phone call and another letter in the mail. The calls and mail were always addressed to my parents.
Sometimes, the notes sent home would be failure notices. I received a lot of them
These were intended to let my parents know that I was not just failing, my grades were failing miserably.
I always tried to intercept these letters from my school.
But I rarely got to the mail before my Mother opened it.
The time between “then and now” as if to explain the time between the infraction and the impending doom of judgment and punishment was brutal.
The day or two between the moment I was in trouble and the time it took until the letter hit my family mailbox and The Old Man found out was often worse than the punishment itself.
I can take a beating because beatings at least came with a p[physical description.
They had a start, a middle, and an end.
Anxiety has a beginning . . .
the rest is lost in the mind’s translation.
Like I said, anxiety and I go back like an old man’s recliner.
I’d like to sever that relationship, which I am doing now, by exposing this.
As I write to you, I have calming music playing from a speaker across the room.
My bird, Popeye the Parrot is sitting on my shoulder.
(He’s a good boy)
My head and heart are mixed with a steady bag of concerns and confusion.
But for now, I think I will just send this out to you, wherever you are, —just to let you know that I am thinking of you
(as always)
I love you
.
.
The Written Addiction 