So after getting all my self together to write about anxiety and worry and stuff like, that I did it, I sat down and started pounding away, dozens and dozens and DOZENS of words. And even while I'm writing I'm thinking, this is so flipping boring, I mean, I'm writing it right now, the words are flowing well and the sentences are neatly locking into each other, and I am honestly bored out of my skull just writing it. I can't imagine what it would be like to read.
So I'm not going to put you through that. Here's the Cliff Notes version, the synopsis-plus-themes-and-tropes version. Only probably without the themes and tropes because those are pretty damn boring too.
I've been anxious since I was pretty young - probably started at about ten or so. Silly stuff, like working up a panic just thinking about having to make a phone call. High school was fun too - anxiety about doing things wrong, looking a fool, being me. All that good, healthy, normal, hideous teenage stuff. I'd walk down the wrong corridor, realize halfway down and then keep on walking because turning around would be admitting I'd make a mistake and all the high school world would know it.
But the thing about being anxious in those silly, idiosyncratic ways is that you get used to them, and after a bit it's just, 'yeah, yeah, phone calls suck and I don't want to ask the store clerk where the kumquats are. Suck it up buttercup' and then I do suck it up (often - or I find the kumquats on my own, whatever) and there's this minor feeling of back-slapping victory over something that is totally, stupidly petty. I suppose that's the pretty, ribbon wrapped gift of anxiety - those ridiculously low bars return a ridiculously high reward when you step over them.
ANYWAY (damnit - and this is the SHORT version!), I had the anxiety thing tapped and figured out, knew what my pain points were, knew that it didn't kill me to face them, just took them in as part and parcel of being just another hyper-wired primate. And then I decided to give away almost everything I owned, leave family, friends and familiarity behind and move city, move country, move continent all alone. I knew it would be a stress and I knew just where my old anxious friend would give me the greatest trouble - mostly because of happy nights spent worrying about it [trains! I'll have to do the trains and know which one to get on and buy tickets and figure out the platform and what if I can't do it or it's too confusing and I get LOST and... and... running around in my head in those horrible 3 a.m.'s that leave you vulnerable to the most irrational stuff.] But I also knew that I needed to do this for a dozen different reasons, not least of which was that I would regret it forever if I didn't. So I did. And I found the train and I searched out the flat and I set up the bills and made the phone calls and got lost down every last back alley in York and I survived it all.
What I DIDN'T expect was an entirely different type of anxiety which, being different, I didn't recognize as just my old friend in a new dress. So when I found myself all balled up after every last flippin' conversation with someone [did I say anything stupid? Did I talk too much? Too little? They laughed at my jokes, but maybe that was nervous, get-me-out-of-here laughter] I didn't immediately think, huh, my brain has found a new way to screw with me! I thought, huh, I'm pretty much a jerk and a social idiot and probably the world hates me and I should not talk to people. Ever. And that would kind of be the wa-wa-waaaaaah end of the story, petering out into me getting tenser and tenser until I finally - who knows when - realized what was going on, shook myself firmly, and crawled out of it.
Only that's not how it plays out, because although I did pick up and move miles away from everyone I know, I took so many of them with me. Loads of them I've never even met in person, but that doesn't matter because they came with me anyway. And they didn't even know I was having these quiet, private moments of panic. They came along and they kept on talking about things in their lives, their own bits of stuff, the good and the bad, sharing just because that's what we do. And because they were sharing and talking and letting me see the size and shape of their days it took my silly, over-inflated anxiety and popped it, deflated it until I could roll it up and put it in my pocket.
Love letter to my internet people. That's what this is.
