I am
a fairly anxious person; I always have been. When I was little, I would run
through a mental list of my worries on pretty much a bi-weekly basis,
anticipating natural disasters and scary monsters. Now, I’m less fearful
(except for the dark, that shit is scary), but it’s especially on days like
today and yesterday, when I’m thoroughly bathed in love and sunshine and wind
and good food and beautiful people, that I realize how little I have to be
anxious about.
I go through my cycles, but I’ve spent a lot of time sitting
with anxiety lately, trying not to be consumed by it, and I think I’m starting to
understand a little bit about its nature. It’s an insecure being, clingier than
any partner you’ve ever had. It takes control and instills within you the sense
that without it to drive you to take action, you are nothing. It is the
relentless spawn of fear, and you feed into its daddy issues. It makes it so
that if you aren’t fighting and working to live up to a standard, whether it’s
one set by yourself or some other entity, you have failed.
Anxiety is a very familiar sensation for a lot of people, especially college students, and especially college students today. Higher
education is basically defined as a vehicle to get you to a type of success or lifestyle that
we are supposed to covet, so it’s not a place to just sit and be. It is a
marathon, with our future dangling in front of us like some flashy banner, and
the whole time we’re running, we’re telling ourselves that once we reach that
banner--and only then--we will be worthy
human beings.
Well, I have asthma
and I hate running.
But, my god, those times when I hug a friend, when I just think
of my parents, when I FB chat with my
cousins, when I talk to my brother--these hold moments when that banner ceases
to hold any significance for me. I realize that if everything, all the education
and resume-building and achievements and goals fell away, I wouldn’t be “nothing”,
I wouldn’t be a failure. I’d be just fine.
It’s funny, because as soon as I realize that my default
state of being is NOT failure, instead of relaxing and taking it easy, I’m
propelled forward. It makes me fearless, it makes me adventurous, it injects me
with life. With this newfound sense of
agency, I can tell myself this: Fight, not because you don’t want to be
nothing, but because you want to be something. Work not because you don’t want
to fail, but because you want to be fulfilled. It’s the simplest difference of
walking right up to what is rightfully yours to have and be, rather than running
away from the darkness that the most fearful parts of you believe that you
deserve.
I’m not saying that I’ll never flirt with anxiety again,
that I’ve abolished it from my life. I’m saying that the relationship is
different now. It’s more on my terms. I guess turning 20 really does make a difference.
So I want to say thank you. Thanks to you who, by virtue of your
very smile, embody this reminder to me. You know who you are, and if you don't, I'm probably still referring to you.
