Back with a vengeance

Written on Wednesday 17th June

Hi pals, guess who it is! Your favourite (surely) anxious bitch! I keep coming back to this blog only when I feel like shit! What’s that about! I guess it doesn’t give a very representative idea of what my life is like at the moment, but then who wants that anyway??? Let’s curate this shit!! 

Yes this is a weird energy, I know. I’m currently in a new phase of anxiety, which I thought was worth mentioning because it’s an interesting one. It doesn't happen that often but when it does it sure is fucking annoying! The phase is this: I Feel Anxious But I’m Also Furious About It. 

For the sake of comparison, usually it’s more like, I Feel Anxious And I’m Too Scared To Do Literally Anything. Usually there’s a bit of anger in the mix as well, at the fact that it’s stopping me from doing Literally Anything, but it’s too buried under all the helplessness and fear and certainty of death, so it makes a change. 

The furious phase is, I’d say, a little bit better. There was one magical instance of it a few weeks ago when I could feel the anxiety coming on, and was getting ready to be all ‘argh’ about it, you know how it is! And then the fury arrived. I was about to brush my teeth at the time, and I looked in the mirror at my drawn, haggard face and my little bamboo toothbrush in my hand, and I was suddenly like, you know what, FUCK THIS!!! And I rounded on Marc and yelled at him, I’m sick of this shit!!!!! I’m not FUCKING DOING IT!!!! It’s BORING!!!! And I started furiously brushing my teeth at a thousand miles an hour. And Marc was like, nervously, great! And I was like, I’m just NOT! Doing! It!!!! Not today!!!!!! And then I didn’t. 

I don’t mean this in an exaggeratey way: it was a ginormous achievement. Literally massive. In my top three achievements of lockdown, along with ‘popping into Sainsburys to pick up some milk with only 40 minutes notice and not freaking out’ and ‘making it this far and still partially functioning for at least some of the time’. I have some nicer lockdown achievements too: knitting a jumper, running a speedy 5K for the first time ever, becoming a competent bread-maker. But honestly... they’re basic in comparison. Anyone can knit a jumper if they just decide to do it and they have the necessary motor skill capacity and wool and lots of time. Anyone can learn to make bread - (spoiler) it’s not that hard. But just deciding to not be anxious is way harder. So that one time I did it was MASSIVE.

And now here I am again, still anxious, still furious. For context, I’ve had a few days off from anxiety here and there recently. In fact, it’s more like I’ve had a few days here and there of anxiety, and the rest of the time I’ve just been myself. In comparison to what things felt like before, this is revelatory! But humans are adaptable and we can get used to anything, and now I’m used to expecting to feel okay, which means that whenever I don’t feel okay, it feels like a very big deal. Like: yes, before, when I was super anxious, I was being hypervigilant about every tiny sensation in my body and convinced each one was a death sentence, and that was silly! But now, as I’m not anxious anymore, I've noticed this tiny sensation in my body and as I’m now functioning normally and still freaking out about it probably that means this one really is a death sentence!!!

Very clever. Very clever logic! It’s obvious that I have indeed totally beaten anxiety.

So anyway. At least I can laugh at it today (which doesn’t mean I don’t still feel it!), and I hope this means that soon it’ll go. I’m having to adapt to new stresses that are out of my control (as are we all, constantly at the moment and in fact all the time really. Life eh!!), and we should probably allow ourselves some time for that, what do we think?? Should I be gentle with myself and just take it easy and wait for things to pass, or should I criticise and rage and feel guilty and upset??? Who knows which approach is best, honestly. Who can say. It’s just so hard to know.