Tags
alone, anxiety, broken, depression, fear, loneliness, lost
I am such an inconsistent person…So excited and enthused about something one moment, then the next, I am barely able to muster the energy to write a single sentence. Then, like now, the mood strikes me at 6 A.M after having spent half of the night trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life.
I mean, I am 33 years old and the reality of it is, I should know what I want. But, I just don’t. I have ideas and dreams, but for the most part that is all they are. I remain trapped in this reality that exists only within my mind and whenever I try to venture out into the world around me, try to set for those dreams and goals that I have set for myself, I find my anxiety and my lack of self worth sending me retreating back into my head…where it is safe…where I know rejection and ridicule do not rest around every corner.
I am a person who has always taught my children to chase their dreams, be it a hobby, a girlfriend/boyfriend, or some other pursuit that seems too far fetched for their logical minds. I always tell them, “The worst that anyone can tell you is no, and that single word isn’t going to send you to the hospital or cause damage that can never be undone. Its just a word and it only has power if you let it.” (Of course, I also teach them to respect it and other people’s uses of the word, but that is something for another time and another random rambling of mine.)
Yet, despite everything I tell them, all the years spent teaching them that no dream or goal is too big, and that even if nobody else believes, they should keep trying….I find myself falling victim to the same sorts of mental traps I have tried to help them so skillfully avoid.
I do fear the rejection. I do fear the laughter and ridicule of those around me for attempting even the simplest of dreams. For example, my writing is my life, and though I doubt I will ever become some world renowned author, I still love to share my work and my thoughts with those around me. Still, each time I begin to type up a story or a personal blog post, I feel the anxiety building inside of me, telling me all the things that make me question why I even started writing in the first place.
So many times, more than I could count, I have started to write and found myself lost in a haze of anxiety and doubt which sends me racing toward the delete button. Fear, that at the root of it all, is ridiculous and unfounded.
I am not writing with hopes of being better than anyone else, nor am I writing with the desire to wow and awe those who do read. I am writing because it is what I love and because ever since I was a child, I was able to express myself better through written words than those that escape my sometimes overactive mouth.
The single most frustrating part of it all? Is that logically I know all of this, and I know that at the end of the day I am not going to be destroyed by the lack of comments or likes that one of my pieces gets me. I know that I will close my laptop, get up and go about my day without the world crumbling down around me.
Most of all, I know that it is the anxiety that is holding me hostage inside of my own mind, convincing me that the reality I have created for myself there is better and safer than the reality that I live in.
And oh how I hate it!
I want to be free of this, to live my life and enjoy the things around me without always seeing the bad that “could” come from any given situation. I want to have fun and laugh and be the person I was before mental illness took over my brain and began to make decisions for me that I didn’t want to make.
I have watched my world change around me, watched my marriage change, my kids change, myself….change…though rather than do something about it, I sit behind the sanctity of my distorted reality and watch like a bystander watches a violent storm raging outside their window.
The one thing that truly gets me though, that I guess I may never understand, is how I can take solace in a reality that is nothing short of terrifying when compared to the one that truly exists around me. How, rather than going outside and experiencing the world, I would rather sit in the darkness of my mind where disembodied voices constantly whisper damaging and spiteful things into my ear.
A lot of times, when I try to speak to my husband about my mental illness, about the anxiety, the depression and the PTSD that ravage me day in an day out, he will tell me that I just need to think more positively and that “its all in my head”…and sometimes, when he does, I cannot help but laugh.
Because, he’s right! It is all in my head, but what he doesn’t understand is that I am trapped here in this place and that every time I reach for him, or for anyone, to try and have them pull me free…I am left grasping at wisps of smoke and nothing more.
Nobody can save me, even the ones that try. In fact, the only one who can save me is myself, and I just don’t know how….or maybe, the sick truth of it all is, I have become so used to this reality inside my head, that I just don’t even want to try.