I miss the parties.

The dinner dates with friends.

Driving with the windows down under a sky that never ends.

I miss the sneaking out the windows, the group pictures, the sleepovers.

I miss the pancakes in the mornings after waking up hungover.

I miss the I love yous.

And the cheesy movie nights.

I even miss the arguments, mistakes and petty fights.

I miss the makeovers, the beach days.

And so much more I can’t recall

Because the life that I am mourning

Was never lived at all.

_______________

To the years my mental illness stole.

Happy one month anniversary!

Okay, fine, you caught me, I’m a little late. Four days late, to be exact. That’s right – the very first post on this blog was uploaded July 5^th. And holy fuck. What a month it has been. (I thought about saying, “what a journey it has been,” but I think that kind of pretentious blogger language lowers my credit score or something).

In all seriousness though, this month has been really full. That’s the best way to describe it: full. Full, as in full of growth, change, and improvement, but also very full of struggles, headaches, and anxiety. Actually, this month has been so full of so many things that I feel like I’ve been writing to you for much longer. When I got the notification that my website was nearing its one-month anniversary, I was like, “What? I’ve posted five thousand times! What do you mean?!” Time is weird, I guess.

But, in celebration of oversharing online for a full month, I want to take today to acknowledge how far I’ve come. I’m not kidding when I say that this year, and this month especially, has been one of the toughest, yet most important times of my life. I’ve come face to face with internal challenges that I didn’t even know were possible. I’m happy I was able to conquer some of those challenges, but I can’t deny that many of them stomped all over me and made me feel like I was back at square one. Something I’m slowly coming to realize, though, is that the fact that I faced those emotional obstacles at all, the fact that I kept going after each and every failure despite how icky, embarrassed, and vulnerable it made me feel, is something to be proud of. In short, this month has been a hell of a lot of emotional labour, but I’m here. (I guess there have been some “growing pains”, huh?)

So, let’s take a look back at where it all started. I began writing to you one month ago. And, to be completely candid, it was out of desperation. I won’t go much further than that, because believe it or not there is a limit to how much I will share on the internet, but I will say that I was probably at one of the lowest points, mentally, that I’ve ever been. I know everyone says that, but like, for real. It was bad, dude. I mean, I started a blog for God’s sake. Isn’t that, like, the number one sign of a mental breakdown for upper middle-class women? (I made the same joke in my intro, but this is my blog, so you have to laugh again. Them’s the rules! *shrugging emoji*)

But yes, a month ago things really sucked. The weirdest part, though, is that I wasn’t worried about whether things would improve for me. I say this because I feel like whenever anyone says, “I was at the lowest point I’ve ever been,” it’s usually followed with something like, “I didn’t think things would ever get better.” In my case, though, I knew there was a solution to how I was feeling, because I’ve pulled myself out of depressive episodes before. Where I was getting stuck, though, was the conundrum of finding that way out. In the past, I had always relied on my therapist, my family, and my friends as a support system when I was going through something difficult. This time, though, all of those people were halfway across the country, so I had to pull my socks up and find other coping mechanisms to keep me sane.

It was through searching for alternative coping mechanisms that I discovered how writing out my feelings really helped. It served as a way to organize my thoughts and figure myself out, similar to how I would by talking to a therapist or to a friend.

Now, do not get me wrong, there are definitely differences between me writing a blog post and me talking to a therapist. As personal as my writing is, I don’t disclose everything. I edit my posts to be more reader-friendly. I also completely avoid certain topics that I can’t handle critically, usually due to them still being attached to personal trauma. So, I hope it makes sense when I say that although writing to you is not my substitute for therapy, it still has certain therapeutic effects. (Not using art as therapy is a subject I feel very strongly about, actually. Stay tuned?)

To be honest, I actually attribute a lot of my successes this month to this blog. Writing here not only helped me feel better, but also kept me busy and on schedule. It would have been really easy for me to spiral into an even deeper depression this summer, given the fact that I don’t have much of a social life where I live. Without a schedule, me tendency would be to not leave bed unless I absolutely had to, and to deny things like cooking, cleaning, and if things got bad enough, even basic personal hygiene. It’s easy to give up on yourself when you don’t think you’re worth anything and when there’s nobody counting on you to be anywhere, I guess. However, knowing that I had to upload every Tuesday and Friday helped keep me occupied and motivated. It gave me something to work towards. I think that was really important.

Also, as much as I talk about being lonely, and not having any friends, and my family being back home, I am partially grateful for the amount of introspection I was able to incorporate this summer. Yes, I would prefer to have a larger circle than I do right now, but near complete solitude this month led me to learning a lot about myself and how to more healthily cope with my brain. I don’t know if I believe in fate, or God, or any sort of higher power, but if something like that exists, maybe I was meant to be alone this summer, for that reason.

All that aside, and as much as this blog is has been extremely beneficial for me, there’s still a long ways to go. Don’t let my progress this month trick you into thinking I’m all healed and that nothing is wrong with me anymore. I mean, for God’s sake, the whole premise on which I founded this blog was that I’m completely lost in my own life! For example, trivial things can still get under my skin and make me feel way more stress than necessary. I still get really sad most days without reason. I’m still really, really hard on myself for mistakes I made when I didn’t know better. And I still sometimes take out frustration on people who don’t deserve it. I could go on and on forever about the things I still need to work on, but the nice thing is that I actually have forever to work on them. (“Forever” as in the rest of my life, but you get it). I’m always going to be a work in progress, is what I’m saying. And I’m excited to see where the next few steps in life will lead me.

Speaking of the next few steps in life, there are some big changes happening soon. To start off, I’m going on vacation this Sunday! I’m flying home for a few weeks to see my friends and family, and to attend my cousin’s wedding. I couldn’t be more excited; I think it will be exactly what I need after this summer of solitude.

The second big change that’s about to happen is school starting. My first day of classes is September third. I’m pretty excited about that, too. It’s more of a nervous-excited, but hey, excitement is excitement!

I also have a lot of goals for this school year. For one, I’d love to get more involved in extra-curriculars. I never did much of that in high school, you know, because of the whole “spending all my time trying to retrain my brain to think properly” thing, but I hear college is better for that kind of stuff anyways. I’d also really like to make a few friends, even just a handful. I don’t need to be the most popular girl in school, but if I could leave this school year with 2-3 buddies, I’d be happy with that.

But my main goal this year is to continue shifting my mindset. This time last year, I was about to start art school, and I had it in my brain that once I moved out and started classes, that everything would be easy. I’d make so many friends, and do so well, and book shows, and love my life without even trying. Now, obviously that’s incredibly naïve, but I didn’t know any better. My perspective now is more understanding of the fact that building a life I love to live is going to take a lot of time, and it’s going to mean stepping way outside of my comfort zone. Basically, I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself. I’m trying to keep in mind that while I’m sure this year is going to be wonderful in countless ways, that there’s parts of this new path that are gonna suck shit at times, too. Like, balancing the extra-curriculars I want to do with all my regular schoolwork. That won’t be fun. Or, going to parties and introducing myself to people so that I can make friends. I know I’ll hate that. But I’m going to do it, so I can reap the rewards.

I will be pretty busy, though. Who knew building a loveable life was such an undertaking? Everyone, I guess, but what I’m getting at here is that I can’t sustain this 2-post-a-week schedule anymore. Don’t get freaked out, I’m not going anywhere, you’ll still get your fix of sad poetry and over-analyzation, it’ll just be once a week instead of twice. I’ll continue to upload on Fridays, but I need my Tuesdays for life stuff. I hope you understand!

Finally, I can’t close this post off without saying a huge thank you to the girl who started this blog. See, I have this tendency to get super embarrassed of who I was earlier this year, because I acted and treated people in ways I never would with a healthy mindset. But that’s just it. I didn’t have a healthy mindset. As much as I tried to deny it, I was on a truly dangerous trajectory, and so of course I did things I’m not proud of. Being ashamed of the girl I was before I started this blog isn’t going to change the way things played out. It won’t give me a do-over of this year, nor will it bring back the people who left my life as a result of my declining mental wellbeing. So, I’m trying to be grateful for that girl instead of angry with her. I’m grateful that despite the emotional turmoil of this year, I was still able to see clearly enough to know I wasn’t where I belonged. I’m grateful that I put in the work to find a new path for myself, and for all the effort I expended ensuring it would be right for me. And, I’m especially grateful that one month ago, I picked up my laptop and started writing that very first post instead of sinking into my bedsheets, defeated, like I wanted to. I’m far from perfect, you all know that. But I’m a little better, and that’s thanks to how hard my one-month-ago-self worked for me. She did the very best she could with what she had. So, to the Gabby one month ago, thank you for believing in me. And to the Gabby one month from now, know that I believe in you. And, to all of you guys, talk to you next Friday. Thank yourself for something this weekend. Love you, stay cool.

(God, what cringey way to end.)

No matter where I am, home feels far away

.

As a child, I resented the vast, flat prairies form which I hailed

For I felt they reflected the vast, flat existence that awaited me

Should I choose to make it home

.

I yearned instead for the bustling nights and twinkling lights

Of an unspecified Big City, so fiercely that I never stopped to appreciate

The way the yellow crops shone against an empty blue sky

.

Imagine the disillusionment that ensued

When I discovered that even the most brilliant of streetlights

Still left me feeling empty, just as the infinities of flatlands I ferociously fled.

.

I always knew that where I come from isn’t where I belong.

But I have unfortunately come to realize that nor is it here,

For the same unenthused brokenness has stayed with me across sixteen hundred miles

.

More unfortunate still is the realization that perhaps nowhere will feel like home

until I learn to fix the brokenness at its very core.

Perhaps the concept of home itself has been lost in translation for me

And for so many others with an eagerness to escape.

Indeed, perhaps home is not the zip code on one’s letters,

but the deep exhale the soul takes when it knows it is safe

.

My soul does not feel safe yet.

I pray for the day it does, so whether it’s fields of canola or tubes of neon that light up the sky,

I’m always home.

I have a riddle for you guys. Well, it’s not really a riddle, more just a clever question I’m going to use in an attempt at artfully introducing today’s post, but “riddle” sounded shorter.

Okay, you ready? Here it is: what’s 167 feet tall, half-American and half-Canadian, and one of the seven natural wonders of the world?

That’s right: Niagara Falls! And I went there, for the first time ever, this week. That being said, the conditions surrounding my excursion were a little…unconventional. And by that I mean, I went at 3:30 in the morning on Tuesday in the car of someone I had never met. Now, before you go getting any funny ideas about those logistics, here’s the story:

I had scheduled to upload Tuesday’s post on Monday night. Just afterwards, I crawled into bed, racking my brain about what to talk about for today. (Kind of terrifying that barely a month into running this blog I’ve already begun to struggle with topics, but that’s showbiz baby!)

Anyways, it was then that a friend texted me asking about my day. We had a short conversation, during which I asked him what he had planned for the evening. He said, “My friend and I are driving to Niagara Falls to take pictures. Wanna come?”

Keep in mind that at the time he asked, it was already 12:30 in the morning, and that the falls are about an hour and a half drive from where I live. On virtually any other night, I would have said no. I should have said no, because I had work the next morning. But for some reason, I didn’t. In the most shocking and out-of-character move of all time, I sent him my address and he and his friend, who I had never met, came to pick me up.

And guys, it was amazing. Seriously! The falls are just as gorgeous as everyone says they are; more beautiful than can be captured on camera. And, while the water itself was obviously the main attraction, the whole surrounding area is populated with museums, fancy restaurants, coffeehouses, bars, gift shops, hotels, and any other type of touristy establishment you can imagine. A lot of it is closed in the middle of the night, so we didn’t stop in anywhere, but marvelling at the way the neon signs lit up the night was enough for me. There’s a strange beauty about it, the glowing scripts juxtaposed against the creamy black sky. (Damn, maybe I would like Vegas?) Also, it’s really mesmerizing to walk around an area that is usually flooded with people at a time when the streets are empty. It’s calming and electrifying at the same time; it felt like the whole place was made just for me.

We spent a few hours driving to different spots, looking at the water from different angles. (You’d be amazed at how easy it is to find parking at Niagara Falls in the middle of the night!) We took some pictures. We walked along the strip. We narrowly avoided getting sprayed by a skunk, who was cunning enough to follow us from the lookout all the way back to our parking spot. We got fries and drinks at a McDonald’s, and then we drove home. At face value, it was a really simple trip. You know, minus the skunk thing. He was a smart little bugger, but we got away! Overall, though, I was only gone for a little over four hours. But I think what was really significant about this little adventure is what it meant for me, what just saying “yes” to something represented for this sentient ball of anxiety who writes to you twice a week.

Now, I’m not going to get all White Vegan Blogger on you (even though effectively, that’s what I am), and talk to you about how the “flow of the water rushing over the falls is a reminder to just sit back and let life’s problems breeze by with effortless vigour and colossal beauty”, or something. I’m not going to tell you that I feel “really connected to the element of water, and so seeing it in all its glory right before my eyes was a spiritual experience.” What I am going to say, though, is that it was important for me to just fucking let go.

 I explained in my post about anxiety that I have this compulsion to always be in control. And, while I’m working on understanding that there are some things that will be beyond my mastery no matter what, I still manage to live a pretty controlled life. For example, I wake up at the same time every morning. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. I have an unchanging bedtime routine. I even keep a list by my bed that breaks down everything I need to do each day, and I do not rest until each and every one of them is crossed off. I know, party animal, right?

But, I think the reason I live the way I do is because it makes me feel safe. That’s what this all comes down to, when you really look at it – safety. I never risk being late for work, because my alarm goes off at the same time every morning. I never risk forgetting about a responsibility, because they’re all written down on a list I can reference at any time I want. I never risk, period. So, if scheduling my life down to the minute is what keeps my anxiety at bay and makes me feel safe, then, logically, breaking that schedule would do the opposite.

That’s what this trip did for me. It broke my very predictable, yet very safe, routine. It showed me that letting go of my death grip on my daily schedule, and feeling the anxiety that comes as a result of that, isn’t going to kill me. Did being out until 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning fuck up my plans for the rest of the day? Absolutely! I was nearly late for work, I skipped my breakfast entirely, and I had to put off cleaning my apartment until later in the evening. I was really anxious about all that, and to be honest, I yelled at myself quite a bit for “screwing things up” by deciding to do something a little frivolous. But the most incredible thing happened: I felt really gross and on-edge and anxious, and then it went away. You hear that? Okay, I guess you didn’t, because you’re reading this and not listening to it out loud, but whatever, that was for emphasis. The point is, the anxiety went away.

Anyone who hasn’t lived with an anxiety disorder most likely has no idea what I’m talking about right now. And that’s okay, let me backtrack. Basically, in the midst of a really anxious moment, the emotion can be so all-consuming that it feels like the rest of the world disappears. And not even in like a cutesy, romantic, type of way, like when couples talk about how when they’re with their significant other, “the rest of the world disappears”. (Like, we get it, Cynthia, you’re in love, but some of us are struggling to get a text back, so please lay off.) No, it’s more like “the rest of the world disappears” as in, “my brain is so hyper-aware of this one feeling that I can’t focus on literally anything else”. And it can be really scary, feeling like anxiety is a state of being.

I think some lessons can only be learned the hard way, you know? I can talk to my therapist for hours about how anxiety always passes eventually, but I won’t really start to understand that until I do things that are out of my comfort zone and experience the anxiety passing from my own perspective.

So yeah, my trip made the next day a little crazy. And yeah, I was really, really anxious about the amount I could’ve gotten done if I had just gone according to my plan. But the anxiety passed, I still figured out a way to still get things done, and thanks to my choosing to let go of my plans, I was able to have a really fun night.

Moreover, it’s not like my whole life has changed. It’s not like I agreed to one exciting trip and now all of a sudden I can do whatever I want because I totally understand how to cope with my anxiety when things go off-plan. For the most part, my life will be the same. But that night was a step. A step that, just a few short months ago, I can tell you for certain I would not have taken. So I’m counting it as a little victory.

I guess if there’s any takeaways from this (Are we doing takeaways now? Okay, cool, I’m down), it would be to acknowledge your emotions as unchangeable truths that do not dictate how you need to act. I couldn’t change that I was anxious on Tuesday, but it didn’t mean I needed to compulsively organize all the clothes in my closet or let things escalate into a panic attack. Similarly, you can’t change whether you’re feeling happy, or angry, or upset, but it doesn’t mean you need to go lash out in a way that will have negative effects on you or other people. And if you’re like me, and you live your life with such rigid structure that it resembles a drill sergeant’s wet dream, just…try letting go a little. I promise it won’t kill you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a very specific morning routine I need to complete.

I saw a quote on Instagram this weekend that kind of inspired what I wanna talk about today. Unfortunately, I don’t remember it word-for-word, and I don’t have the name of the account I found it on, because it may or may not have been 2 am, and I may or may not have just finished crying when I saw it. (Don’t judge, okay, nothing was wrong, sometimes you just gotta cry. You feel?)

But anyways, the gist of it was, “Of course personal growth sucks. If we called it, ‘deliberately making yourself so uncomfortable that you feel like you’re dying everyday’, nobody would do it.” And I was like, “huh”. Because that applies to a lot of what I’ve been experiencing lately. I think.

Let’s rewind a little.

I’ve been finding myself feeling pretty angry for the past little while. Not like, screaming and throwing chairs for no reason angry, but like, irritable. Annoyed. Generally speaking. Now, maybe that’s because I’m stressed. Maybe it’s because my roommates had visitors this weekend and I get uncomfortable around people I don’t know. But I think (or at least, I’d like to believe), that it has something to do with how much energy I’ve been putting in to improving my mental health. 

How is working on my emotional wellbeing making me annoyed? I’m so glad you asked! Let me explain.

 First off, let it be known that working to improve your mental health is fucking tiring. And it’s even harder when you’re trying to crawl out of what has virtually been a year-long relapse, with the vast majority of your support system living thousands of kilometers away. (Not to be all, “woe is me”, or anything, I know I got myself into this entirely of my own volition, and that there are people who have it way harder. Still, though, just because other people have it worse than me doesn’t mean what I’m going through doesn’t also suck, you know? But I digress.)

Like I said, working on my mental health takes a lot out of me. Because, truly, it takes a lot more than face masks and bubble baths to really see improvement. Rather, I’ve been trying to actually go to things when I get invited to them, even if every ounce of me is screaming to stay in bed and watch Netflix. I’ve been trying to socialize more at work, even when I’d honestly prefer to spend my shifts overthinking every interaction I’ve ever had. I’ve been trying to have hard conversations with the people I care about, ones where I express my needs and try to be accommodating of theirs, rather than shying away from conflict like I usually do. And of course, I’ve been trying to eat healthily, get enough sleep, exercise, and do all the other trivial things that are supposed keep me balanced.

The problem is, my illnesses always act up when I’m tired. Whether I’m physically tired, mentally tired, or both, I can almost always count on some type of episode when I’m exhausted. And, it makes sense when you think about it. Fighting off my brain’s unhealthy thoughts like a never-ending game of Breakout takes a lot of energy. Energy that, when I’m already tired to begin with, I simply don’t have. So it’s like this: I work my ass off constantly, trying to improve my mental state. But doing all the things I need to do in order to improve my mental state is exhausting. And when I’m exhausted, my illnesses give me trouble!

So that was essentially just a long-winded way of saying that the anger I’ve been feeling lately is a manifestation of my mood disorders. (Before you ask, yes, anger and irritability are really common symptoms of anxiety and depression.  People just don’t like to acknowledge that because they’re not as “soft” and “vulnerable” emotions as sadness or fear. Something to talk about in a future post maybe?)

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Okay, yeah, but it’s about balance, you sticky doorknob. If you’re so tired from working on yourself, take a day to just chill, do some self-care, and then get back to it.”

To which I would say, “Cool insult. But also, you don’t quite understand.”

Here’s the thing that’s throwing me off: I’m a total introvert. Meaning, I’m the type of person who reenergizes by being alone. It’s not that I don’t like people, I do, but when I’ve had a long day or an exhausting work week, I need alone time to feel like myself again.

This presents a bit of a problem, though, because I want to be alone when I’m tired. But as discussed, my depression and anxiety also get worse with exhaustion, meaning I really should do something social to help combat that. Does that make any sense? Basically, it’s dangerous taking “alone time” to refuel when my tiredness is making me depressed. Because when I’m alone and depressed, it’s not just alone time, it’s isolation. And it’s hard to get out of that pattern once it’s begun.

It’s the most annoying vicious cycle of all time: I’m tired, so I’m depressed, and I wanna be alone. But because I’m depressed, being alone makes things worse, so I spend even more energy trying to counter the depression. That, in turn, makes me more tired, so I’m back at square one. And like, UGH! You know? How annoying is that? I just want to have a normal self-care routine without throwing the rest of my life all the way off balance! Is that too much to ask for?

But I guess that brings me back to where I began. Back to that quote. I suppose the fact that I’m struggling with the balance between actively fighting my mental illnesses and giving myself time to recuperate is a sign that I’m growing. And it’s really uncomfortable, given my compulsion to control everything in my life, to feel like I can’t have a foolproof, steadfast self-care routine that I can stick to no matter the circumstances.

Unfortunately for me though, sitting in that uncomfortability, letting myself feel uneasy, and trying to keep in mind that things will figure themselves out eventually (despite how exasperated I get when I can’t be in control), is the best I can do right now. And that’s okay.

So yeah, personal growth really sucks. And it hurts, and it’s annoying, and it makes me feel all types of things that I really don’t like feeling. Join me, though. I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

Up until Wednesday night, I had planned for today’s post to be a life update. I know that sounds crazy, since for the past few weeks I’ve been uploading sad poetry like my life depends on it, but I didn’t have anything sad to write about. I was doing well, and I was happy about it. I was gonna talk about how I’m going to visit my family in a few weeks, and how I’m looking forward to their company. I was gonna talk about how in six weeks I start at my new school, and how I’m looking forward to making new friends and leaving this horrid year behind. But of course, like everything else, this week didn’t go as planned.

I’ll spare you the details, but what it comes down to is money. Due to some technicalities with my student loans, I was faced with the unfortunate truth that attending school this year is going to be much more difficult than anticipated. Financially, that is. And so, at the end of a week where things were going pretty well, I had the first panic attack I’ve had in a little over a month.

Before I go any further, let me explain what a panic attack is. (Or at least, my interpretation – still not a doctor, unfortunately. Boo.) Panic attacks are basically periods of elevated anxiety that reach a peak within minutes and that can include heart palpitations, trembling, vomiting, hyperventilation, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, accelerated heart rate, and just about any other shitty thing you can imagine happening to your body.

Anyways, for me a panic attack is generally 15-20 minutes of intense fear accompanied by racing thoughts that accumulate on top of one another, so quickly that I can’t catch my breath (figuratively or literally). The thoughts build and build until the anxiety reaches an apex and I’m 100% sure I’m going to die. I hyperventilate, can hardly speak, I feel nauseous and dizzy, and I cry uncontrollably. It’s like my brain gets so overwhelmed that it just starts firing out stress signals to every system in my body because it can’t figure out what’s wrong. Or something.

Once the intensity passes, I’m left feeling exhausted (physically and emotionally), scatter-brained, and generally pretty anxious for the rest of the day.

If you’re thinking, “But Gabby! That doesn’t sound poetic at all! I thought mental illness was a beautiful tragedy!”, I’d like you to go watch 13 Reasons Why and never talk to me again. Because mental illness sucks. And it’s so ugly. And I didn’t start this blog to make you guys think I have it all under control, because a lot of the time, I don’t.

Up until Wednesday night, I had planned for today’s post to be a life update. But there’s no update. Instead, I wanted to share my steam of consciousness in the moments following a breakdown. I thought it might help those who don’t experience anxiety understand what it’s like to live in such a consuming moment. Or, maybe it could make those who do experience panic attacks feel less alone. Either way, these are the types of thoughts that go through my mind when I’m anxious. Reading them now, I know they’re irrational. I know they don’t make sense. I can point out discrepancies like a kid pointing out cows on the side of the highway (you can really tell I’m from the country with that simile, yikes). But that’s the point. Anxiety makes you believe these thoughts make sense. And in a moment of panic, they pile up on top of each other so quickly that by the time you challenge one, six others have already elevated the trepidation tenfold. I’m not sure if this could be triggering to those who experience panic attacks. But here’s a trigger warning just in case. Other than that, enjoy my insanity. (Also, don’t watch 13 Reasons Why.)

.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about this entire situation is the prospect of having to quit school for the second time. I already worked through feelings of being a failure when I decided to take a year off after high school, while most people from my school headed off to colleges across Canada and the US with a variety of scholarships and bursaries. I already worked through feelings of being a failure after dropping out of art school. I don’t think I can handle another failure of that magnitude. A double college dropout at twenty? Like, not to brag, but I did well in school (whether that can be attributed to actual intelligence or my crippling anxiety preventing me from giving less than 150% on anything I worked on is anyone’s guess). I can’t be the honour roll kid who works a part time job and lives in her parents’ basement until twenty-five. That’s prideful, and I know it, but it’s how I feel.

Plus, not only am I terrified of being that girl who threw away all her potential, but I really want to go to this school. I picked it out kind of last minute, because I was looking for something to fill the hole that performing left in my life and in my heart, but after looking in to it and touring campus, seeing my classes and meeting other students there, I became genuinely excited. I think I could do really well there. The field of study interests me. It’s something I could totally see myself doing. And now I might not get to. Why? Because my brain doesn’t fucking work. That’s really what it comes down to.

That’s the other thing. When you really, truly, get down to the centre of this issue, the problem is my brain. My mental illnesses. Firstly, if I hadn’t spent most of my teenage years in therapy trying to learn that eating an apple isn’t scary and that the people I love aren’t conspiring against me, I might have had more time to apply for scholarships that would’ve helped me out here. Secondly, if it weren’t for my stupid relapse at the beginning of this year, maybe I would’ve succeeded at performing. Maybe, if I wasn’t such a fuck up, I wouldn’t have panicked to get out of that school so fast and I would have done really well. If that were the case, I’d be nearly half done my program by now, and I’d only have to worry about funding for one more year. Sure, I’d probably have to move home after finishing to make some money before I started auditioning, but I’d still be done college at twenty-one, the age when most people finish. I’m looking at four more years of school here. It’s four more years that I want to do, but I’ll be nearly halfway to thirty when this is over. And if I move home to make money at twenty-four? I probably won’t get to actually start on my career until I’m close to thirty! That’s literally an entire decade that could’ve gone differently if it weren’t for my neurobiology with the functioning capacity of a McDonald’s ice cream machine.

So, start on my career at thirty. It feels like a best-case scenario where I’m still a piece of shit. I come from a family where all my aunts, uncles, and older cousins either went immediately into university after high school or started working right away. I have a cousin who’s twenty-four, has her degree, and is getting married in a month. Married! At this rate when I’m twenty-four I’ll be barely graduating, if I have enough money to attend even my first year of school, that is. And where the fuck am I supposed to find time to date if I’m working full time and living paycheck to paycheck while I’m in school? Forget twenty-four and married, I’ll be thirty just getting back on my feet from college, working an entry level job and swiping on Tinder to feel better about my pathetic life.

AND, there’s always the possibility that I come up with the money to go to school and pay rent, but I don’t have enough for groceries. I’m already at the point where every time my family sees me, they tell me I look too thin. (Which is great for my dysmorphia, I’m so glad you asked!) If I don’t have enough money for groceries, I probably won’t do as well in school, because I’ll be thinking about how hungry I am all day instead of the actual material. Not only that, but if I lose even more weight, by the time my family sees me at Christmas (if I have enough money for a flight home), they’ll assume I’m starving myself again and will force me to drop out, which brings us right back to square one.

Also, forget making friends, because when I’m in school thirty hours a week and working thirty more, plus homework, laundry, groceries, cleaning, sleep (optional?), commuting, and extra cirriculars, I’m not going to even have enough time to shake hands with someone. And, let’s say I do make friends, what do people like to do to socialize? Go out, get food, drinks, see a movie, etcetera. And guess who can’t do any of that? Me, the girl who will be eating sleep for dinner for the next four years!

God, why didn’t anyone tell me adult life would suck so much? Does it get worse? Does it get better? It sure as hell feels like it can’t get any worse, but that’s what I said to myself when I was leaving art school, that’s what I said to myself when I was thirteen and being admitted to the hospital, and guess what? It! Got!! Worse!!!

I fucking WISH I had appreciated how good my life was in high school. Even though I didn’t have that many friends, even though my mental stability was fragile, even though I was in therapy once a week learning to think like a normal person. Now I’d love to go to therapy, but one session is like two months’ worth of groceries. I’d love to have friends, but I can’t afford to leave my house other than to work. Good thing my roommates are nice.

I’m just, I’m freaking out here. I can’t be the girl who’s a double college dropout at twenty. I can’t be the girl who’s just starting her career at thirty. I can’t be the old spinster who never had time to find anyone because the shitty decisions she made in her youth prevented her from ever having a second that wasn’t about work, and money, and saving. I can’t be the thirty-five-year-old trying to “get back on her feet” living with her parents or the forty-year-old living on the street because her parents kicked her out because they got tired of her mooching off of them and she never found a job in her field and nobody wants to hire the middle-aged woman with no experience who barely meets the qualifications. I would die. I could die. I feel like I’m gonna die. I’m dying.

.

Do you see how panic attacks happen?

I have spent two decades of life

Fighting like hell for the love of people who believe I’m almost good enough.

Who believe if I spoke my mind a little more,

but a little less,

Who believe if I was less accommodating,

But more forgiving,

Who believe if I was more independent,

But less assertive,

Then I would be worthy

.

But through all the time I spent juggling the stipulations of their affection,

Trying desperately to find the right combination of words or actions that would finally complete their twisted jigsaw puzzle of intimacy,

As if partnership was the picture I would see once I properly put the pieces in place,

What I loved about them was their humanness

.

What I loved about them was the way they dealt with their bad days,

And the way they sometimes got worked up over nothing.

What I loved about them was the times they failed,

Because at least it showed they were trying

.

But having bad days was off limits for me,

So was getting worked up, at all,

And god forbid I were to fail, at anything,

Because the way I chose to cope with my shortcomings somehow violated the arbitrary, ever-changing rules I needed to follow in order to receive the same love that I gave out for free

.

These people didn’t want me to be faultless.

But they did want me to make mistakes in a way that made sense to them.

To fit into the steadfast mold of a flawed “friend” or “lover” that they had trained themselves to believe was the only acceptable idiosyncrasy

.

And so when those people walked away,

Dissatisfied with my inability to be their perfect version of imperfection,

They left me with all the unconditional love I had once poured into them,

With nowhere to direct it but home

.

It was only when I was forced to love myself for my humanness,

The way I had them for theirs,

That I realized they were wrong

For ever putting conditions on endearment

.

Because I speak my mind just enough,

I forgive just enough,

I am just assertive enough

To be so much more than almost enough.

Have you ever fallen down a Google spiral? The kind where you start by looking up something like “celebrities you didn’t know had twins,” and somehow end up, three hours later, on a Wikipedia article about the history of horse racing?

Full disclosure, that happens to me a lot. Usually It’s when I can’t sleep, and it’s how, a few nights ago, I found myself browsing through a list of odd phobias. There seems to be a diagnosable fear for just about everything out there – there’s chorophobia: the fear of dancing. Heliophobia: the fear of the sun. Arithmophobia: the fear of numbers. Panphobia: the fear of everything. Even alliumphobia: the fear of garlic.

            Wait, wait, wait. Go back a second. What was that last one? No, not the garlic one. I definitely don’t have that, I add garlic to everything. The one before that.

            “Fear of everything? How is that possible,” I thought. “How could someone live at all when they’re afraid of everything!? There’s no way that’s a thing.”

Except, oh wait, it is a thing. And it’s called anxiety. And I have it.

            Okay, even I am willing to admit that intro was cheesy. Hopefully none of you have turophobia though, right? (Turophobia: the fear of cheese. Thanks, Google.)

But, back to the subject. My relationship with anxiety has lasted longer and been more intimate than my relationships with any of the boyfriends I’ve had, so I have a lot of firsthand experience. In fact, anxiety has affected me for so long that I genuinely don’t know what it’s like to live without it. For a lot of my childhood, I thought it was normal to catastrophize the minutiae of every situation.

For example, when I was in elementary school, my siblings and I used to go to an after-school program for a few hours every day until our parents could come pick us up. Lots of kids from our school went, too; it was pretty common because school let out at 3 and most parents with full-time jobs worked until 5 or 6. The whole thing was monitored by a couple of college students sent by the YMCA, who I’m pretty sure were only doing it to pay for textbooks, so for the most part we were allowed to roam around and play without a ton of supervision. Sounds like a kid’s dream, right? Well, not mine.

You see, I had two little siblings in the program with me. So while I should’ve been jumping rope or mastering the monkey bars, I spent most of my time at that program frantically running back and forth between the gym (where my brother was playing basketball) and the playground (where my sister was on the swings). I was absolutely certain that if one of them was out of my sight for more than a few minutes, they’d be kidnapped and would never be seen again. I would get sick to my stomach every day after school. I could never understand how the other kids my age were able to just do their homework without panicking over the thought of their siblings getting abducted.

It’s only within the past few years that I’ve started to put into perspective how not everyone thinks like me.

I am absolutely not a doctor, and I have no formal training on the logistics of anxiety, but I have been in therapy for nearly half my life, so here’s my For Dummies version:

 An anxiety disorder is your brain’s system for protection sent into overdrive. Most people have heard about the “fight-or-flight” response; it’s your brain’s way of alerting you when a threat is encountered. Your brain sees the danger and goes, “Look out! This thing will likely hurt you. We need to keep you safe; either we tackle it head-on, or get as far away from it as we can.”

This mechanism was very useful evolutionarily: if you’re reading this right now, it’s because your ancient ancestors had a working fight-or-flight response. When they were out hunting for food and encountered a jaguar, they didn’t just stand there and let it rip them apart. They either fought it or ran away from it, stayed alive, were able to reproduce, and some 2,000,000 years later, you’re here. Cool, right?

Now, theoretically, this reaction should be reserved for threats that could jeopardize survival; the jaguar situation, for example, or in today’s world, being followed by a stranger on a secluded street at night. This is because the amount of stress hormones that fight-or-flight causes the brain to release is taxing on the body, causing nausea, shortness of breath, and all the other things you feel when you’re nervous. But for someone with an anxiety disorder, this system can be activated by just about anything, from being in a crowded space to missing the bus. As a result, the brain is constantly firing off stress signals to the rest of the body, shouting “DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!” when nothing’s really wrong.

As you can imagine, it fucking sucks.

For me, anxiety manifests in a compulsion to control. I think my brain is tired from constantly sending out warning signals to the rest of my body, so it figures if I know exactly what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, it won’t need to send me in to fight-or-flight sixteen times a day. Obviously, however, this creates its own problems. There is so much in life that can’t be predetermined, and that scares the shit out of me. I’m a total planner; I like structure, I like schedules, I like lists. I need them to function. However, no amount of excel spreadsheets could allow me to know for certain where I’ll be five years from now, and so my brain tries to compensate by fussing over the tiniest details of the things I can control.

I actually think anxiety, specifically my need to control things, has a lot to do with why I developed an eating disorder at such a young age. At thirteen, I shouldn’t have cared so much how my body looked. I didn’t even fully have a body yet. Okay, I mean like, I did, I wasn’t a ghost, but I had barely hit puberty, so it still had a long way to go. In retrospect, though, I don’t think I actually cared that much about having a flat stomach. I think what was more important to me, subconsciously, was being in control. As the awkward middle school years hit, I couldn’t know in advance when I was going to get acne, or schedule which boy was going to ask me to dance at the school formal. So I opted for the next best thing, which was restricting calories and hyper-focusing on exercise.

My anxiety likes to try and control other aspects of my life, too. It will disguise itself as hypochondriasis, somehow convincing me that the headache I have is because I definitely have brain cancer and conveniently ignoring the extra cup of coffee I had in the morning. “But, not to worry,” it tells me, “make a doctor’s appointment RIGHT THIS INSTANT and hopefully they’ll be able to catch the tumour early, before it starts to spread. Oh, and compulsively drink water, that always helps.”

Anxiety sabotages my relationships, too, assuring me that a slight variance in a loved one’s tone of voice means they hate me or are hiding some terrible secret. “You obviously did something wrong,” I think, “Remember that time three months ago when you didn’t offer them a bite of your muffin? That’s definitely that this is about. They hate you for it. Now every time you’re eating anything in front of them, ever, offer them some so they don’t hate you anymore.”

I know, logically, that this way of thinking is irrational and unhealthy. But, sometimes I don’t catch myself before it’s too late. Anxiety is very good at convincing me that it’s not there, that my fears are rational, that I can control everyone and everything around me, if I just try hard enough. That’s how panic attacks happen, how relationships are vandalized, and how I destroy my own life by trying to fix it.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from living with chronic anxiety, it’s that I can never understand it fully. Like I said, for me anxiety is about control, and so thinking I have my condition all figured out is a symptom of the issue itself. I can’t control how my life is going to play out. I can’t control the weather, or rush hour traffic, or how other people feel about me. Perhaps the thing I can control least of all is my desire to control everything.

This is incredibly hard to come to terms with, because to me control means safety. Thus, being out of control means living in a permanent state of endangerment. If I can’t control, I can’t know what’s going to happen next, and how am I supposed to protect myself from getting hurt if I don’t know what’s going to hurt me?

That’s rhetorical. There isn’t a way, and that notion is terrifying.

 Before you ask, yes, I’ve tried meditation. I’ve tried deep breathing. I’ve tried keeping a gratitude journal. I’ve tried it all. And while I think those coping techniques can be beneficial, I think they’re kind of “Band-Aid-over-a-bullet-hole” type of remedies. I can breathe all the way down to my toes, and that still won’t fix the fact that I’m going to want to script all my conversations.

Living with anxiety is something that’s going to take the rest of my life to understand, because, like me, my anxiety is always growing and changing. I don’t have to check on my siblings every few minutes anymore, but I do feel the need to schedule my days down to the minute. Once I figure out a way around that, anxiety will come back at me from new angle, likely one I haven’t considered yet. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Hey, see what I just did there? “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” I didn’t even try to predict the next thing I’m going to be anxious about. Maybe I’m doing better than I thought.  

“Doing well” with a mental illness can be really complicated, especially after a prolonged period of doing really poorly. Here are my thoughts on that.

———————————————————-

I’m doing well, with caution

Because nothing lasts forever

I worry I’ll spiral again.

I’m doing well, with culpability

Because everything is still hard

I suppose I should suffer more.

I’m doing well, with qualm

Because now I have perspective

I think I overreacted.

I’m doing well, with questioning

Because everything feels lighter

I’m not used to unalloyed joy.

I’m doing well, with conditions

Because it takes time to adjust

I come with liabilities.

I’m doing well, with confidence

Because it takes time to adjust

And everything’s feeling lighter

Now that I have some perspective.

Everything is still really hard

Although, nothing lasts forever.

I’ll admit, I haven’t been feeling particularly inspired to write anything over the past few days. Which sucks, because it has literally been ~oNe WeEk~ since my first post, and somehow I’m already getting writer’s block. I guess my whole “thing” is being messy and confused, though, so you could say I’m right on track.

Anyway, my desktop is currently cluttered with about 10 different excerpts, poems, and essays that I tried to start writing but got stuck on halfway through. I think my main problem is my mind is super cluttered. Every time I try to start writing, I can’t seem to organize my thoughts and I end up with something totally jumbled that bounces awkwardly between a dozen topics. It’s like one of those snack mixes where none of the snacks go together that well and you’re like, who decided it would be a good idea to put cheese crackers in the same bowl as banana chips? I don’t know if that makes sense, but neither has anything I’ve written this week, and it’s the best metaphor I have for you right now.

So, here’s a little thing I wrote yesterday morning when I was all in my feelings about moving on. If you’ve read my introduction (which you should, if you haven’t, because basically none of what I’m posting will make any sense to you without that context, and also I love self-promo), you’ll know I’m 100% in some sort of a healing mode right now, trying to move forward from the trauma of this past year. I hesitate to call this piece a poem, because it doesn’t rhyme and it doesn’t have any clever literary devices. But a poem is what I was going for, and despite being a little incoherent, I think it encapsulates pretty well how I’ve been feeling lately. Moving on kinda sucks, dude. I hope you like this.

———————————————————————

Moving on is so weird.

Obviously it’s not linear.

But it sometimes feels like the process of moving on is more painful than the event itself.

Because now it’s said and done, and I’m left to ruminate with everything I did, everything I didn’t do, everything I could’ve done better, and know I can’t change it.

I can’t fault myself for what I did wrong.

All I ever did is what I thought was right in the moment.

Hindsight is powerful, I guess.

On the bad days, I feel bad, and on the good days, I feel guilty for not feeling bad.

Is that why they say two steps forward, one step back?

I think, somehow, part of me doesn’t want to move on.

Because moving on means letting go, and letting go means forgetting

And I don’t want to forget.

I wish this poem had a happy ending.

Maybe it’s just not finished yet.