the age of anxiety

anxiety, my darling, are you friend or are you foe?

In a bit of an unusual fashion for an article of mine, I am, at the moment, working through the present instead of the past.

The irony is baked right into the title of this piece because, truly, every age has been held together by a profusion of anxiety carefully working its magic to hold my existence steady on this earth.

Anxiety has always been momentum. The wind beneath my sails, so to speak.

Fuel when I refused to eat.

Friend when I had none.

Refuge when raucous instability churns around me.

In the depths of my eating disorder, I was often offered medicine in various forms to squelch the onslaught of imbalanced neurochemicals and thoughts that were the very antithesis of what recovery required of me.

But I always declined, knowing that I needed Anxiety and nothing could replace her.

She kept the depression away. Or, I suppose, when depression came knocking, Anxiety was the only one convincing enough to get me out of bed.

Anxiety fueled the disordered behavior I clung to. Grueling rules to keep me thin were strictly enforced by this omnipresent dictator.

Sitting through the discomfort it raised in my body – tight chest, shallow breathing, untamed electricity pulsing through my veins – seemed a small price to pay for the control it ushered. Conducting life seamlessly, while I watched from the sidelines in awe. Sure, I felt left out from time to time, and often I longed to jump into the action, confident that I had a thought or opinion that could be of crucial assistance.

But Anxiety always turned me down. I was a novice after all. Nothing more than a scared little girl who knew nothing of the horrors that lay beyond my sideline safe haven.

Anxiety saved me from choices and their consequences. It navigated the churning sea with deft confidence. It wove the tapestry of my life with nimble fingers.

All it asked for in return was my silence & submission.

Don’t get in the way, little girl.

@shagey_

Then Anxiety almost killed us both, power-hungry insanity sinking the ship, and I had to claw my way free from its delusional antics and fight like hell to keep my head above water.

Therapy has kept me treading water, yes. It has even taught me how to swim, to some degree.

It’s given me language and knowledge, and I do believe that knowledge is a sword. But what therapy has never given me, until maybe recently, is any training on how to wield said sword, and who I should be aiming for when I do.

So often, I feel that I am my own worst enemy. That to punish myself is to punish away my pain. As if depriving myself will somehow lead me to clarity instead of just diminishing me to nothingness. For years, I didn’t know how to fight, only to defend.

A smaller target is harder to hit.

Without a shield or a weapon with which to fight back, my best choice was to hide. And the best way to hide was by letting Anxiety mask me, protect me, guide me, save me.

Friend or foe, then?

This wicked thing.

This unforgivable curse.

This neighbor.

This adversary.

This savior.

This sentence.

This regret.

@shagey_

It’s all fun and games watching from the sidelines until you realize how desperately you wish to be playing too.

So slowly, and quietly, and not all at once, and sometimes not at all, I’ve been memorizing the moves. Mapping out plays. Learning my opponents. Strengthening my emaciated muscles.

I’ve been reopening old wounds in therapy and in writing. I have been weathering the onslaught of heretofore unfelt feelings bleeding profusely from these gaping wounds.

Therapy teaches me not to frantically and haphazardly stitch but to instead will the infection to drain away, so that these wounds might finally begin to heal.

This is how I grow strong. Strong enough, I hope, to finally play in the game, too.

28 years in, I finally worked up the courage to ask Anxiety if I could show her what I’m worth now.

Put me in, coach.

And then I realized, in her menacing leer, in the gleam of her claws, in the show of her teeth, who the real opponent was all along.

She’s never intended to let me set foot on this battlefield.

And recognizing my newfound strength and swordsmanship, she now sees me, as I see her. An enemy to be vanquished.

@shagey_

We’re in the midst of a teetering stand-off this very minute, as I write. Somewhere, deep in my soul, I can feel just how pivotal the outcome of this war will be.

And she is playing dirty.

She knows me well.

She has years on me and of me.

She knows exactly which strings to pull.

She’s already got me eating less, to slowly deplete and confuse my will.

I’m caving in on myself bit by bit as her advantage gains on the narrow space between us.

I’m pulling away from Hope as she throws the full force of her might like a razor-sharp wedge between us.

Reality is dancing in and out of focus.

The waters churn in her wrath.

The air is depleting of oxygen.

I’m dizzy when I stand.

My fledgling muscles tremble on the edge of failure.

Maybe I wasn’t strong enough for this fight after all…

It’s all in my head, yet it rings in my bones. The ache, the seductive pull from my nervous system to make a tactical retreat. My brain is scrambling for that sword of knowledge. It’s there.

Adrenaline builds just enough that I might get in one last fateful swipe at her.

But first, I must remember:

How. To. Breathe.

Because if I’m going down, this time, I’m going down swinging. Hard.

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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art by @shagey_ on Instagram.