the irrationality of anxiety

My anxiety comes and goes.

When I was younger I could see it coming, perhaps because I lived in a near constant state of anxiety, so it was almost always present even if only in the background. I would see it coming. I'd sit in a corner and wait for the shadows to come like frenemies I'd invited to a play date.

But as an adult, more often than not it comes on slowly and unexpectedly. It sneaks in between moments of content and calm and even happiness. It slithers around my body slowly... constricting one minuscule heartbeat at a time, getting tighter and tighter the more I acknowledge it. I can keep my mind controlled, or rather occupied, for a little while, and it'll relax and release only to tighten around me again the moment I let my guard down.

It never starts as what I would call anxiety. It starts as stress or worry or fear or doubt, and never one of them, but a combination of several. It causes simple things to make me cry. It causes all things simple to become complex. And I can never pinpoint one thing that would make it stop or even one thing that made it start. Which makes it impossible to understand, which makes me frustrated with myself.

Even if I were to list out every single thing I am currently worried about and then below each thing write out exactly why that is not a thing I need to worry about, it wouldn't make a difference. Knowing intellectually that everything is fine and there is nothing to panic about, does not stop the panic. Does not stop the fear, the worry, the sadness, the upset, the overwhelming feeling that something is wrong. Because anxiety is not a rational emotion or state of being.

My anxiety is like when you wake up from a terrible dream, or at least you think it was terrible, but you don't really remember it. You just know you were in a bad situation and there's this lingering feeling of unrest and lack of safety and fear that there's something wrong. And it's irrational, because you're safe in your bed and you're alone and the doors are locked and your pets are sleeping soundly beside you but none of that matters because knowing it's irrational doesn't stop the feeling. And no matter how many lights you turn on or prayers you say or episodes of Friends you watch, that feeling lingers for a while... until at some point it goes away. And you manage to forget the hold it had on you.

But when it's anxiety and not a dream, you can only forget about it for so long. You go back to normal, whatever that means, until it shows up again. And just like that you're back, and there's no fixing it and there's no rationalizing it, and there's no way out. Until there is.

I realize this is my experience with anxiety and not everyone's. I would imagine it's different for every individual. A lot of us are going through it. Whatever "it" may be. Even if we rarely share. It's easier not to share because being vulnerable sucks sometimes and can often trigger other issues. But writing helps me cope and understand myself a little bit better. Sometimes. And maybe someone who reads this (most likely someone I know) will find comfort in knowing that they're not alone. That anxiety is messy, stress is messy, emotions in general are messy and you never know who is going through a messy internal struggle on the inside, despite what they express on the outside.

Anyway, I'm out of words. Goodnight. I hope your Sunday evening is less tumultuous than mine and that your work week starts off with a bang tomorrow! Like... a good bang. Not a scary one. :)

Maybe I should rewrite that last bit... never mind. Bye.

(art by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor)