september seven

The Crippling Companion

Wish that I could stay forever this young, not afraid to close my eyes. Life's a game made for everyone and love is the prize.

It is time to talk about the thing in my life that scares me more than anything in the world. It's time to talk about my anxiety. I am hoping that talking about it (with only myself, I am assuming) will make it a little easier, but who knows.

I know that everyone in their life faces anxiety. I know that people worry about things all the time. Unfortunately, I live my life in a constant state of anxious.  I am so deeply rooted in my emotions and the way I feel and the way I make others feel and all of that matters so much to me, that my emotions get the best of me day after day.

I worry constantly about things. I can say that there isn't much in life that scares me, it all just worries me. The list of things that worry me is long and drawn out and some of the things are stupid but it always ends up being the same 3-5 things that haunt me and bring on that crippling anxiety that causes me not to sleep and to feel like I can't even breathe in the room that I am in.

My job. I hopped right out of college hoping that I was going to bust out into the real world and prove myself and immediately start making differences in the lives of the youth of America. Well, I didn't get the job I dreamed of and I go to work every day feeling like I just can never do it completely right. It is discouraging and disheartening and I pray every day that I just become a little bit better and eventually get the hang of it. But that's the problem, I don't want to just 'get the hang of it'. I want to be the best. I have anxiety over whether or not my boss likes me. I have anxiety over whether or not I will be fired at the end of my probationary period. I have anxiety over whether or not the parents of my students think I am a joke.

Money. The worst of all. Money is an evil bitch that I wish didn't exist. I wish it didn't have such a firm hold on our lives. We let it give so much value to ourselves when it really makes no difference at all to who we are but all the difference in living our lives. How much you make doesn't define what kind of a person you are or how valuable you are in the world. However, if you don't make enough, it becomes really difficult to live your life. Why is it that life is so dependent on monetary value? These are the things that keep me awake at night and bother me day after day. Yes, yes, yes. I make enough money to survive and do the things I want to do, but I have this constant feeling that I will always be in debt to someone or something. I know that is the way the world works and I have to find a way to make peace with that.

Disappointment. The worst feeling I can feel in my life is knowing that I have disappointed someone. The feeling that I let them down. I didn't live up the their expectation. I hurt their feelings. And when I realize I did this, it kills me. I hate disappointing my parents. I don't like when they get less than they deserve from me.  The brought me into this world and taught me how to live my life right and when I pull the world out from under them and cause them discomfort, I eats away at me. I hate disappointing my friends. I hate disappointing my best friends. I try so hard to be the kind of friend I want to have in return. Unfortunately, 9 times out of 10, my friends are much better to me than I am to them. It saddens me when I don't live up to their expectations that they have of me. When I wrong them, I want nothing in the world but to make it right.

Love. This one is the saddest of all. And it is really sad that I cried to my boss the other day and told her that I felt like I wasn't getting enough love in my life. My mother claims it is because I don't love myself enough and that I am always running in search of something. I feel like I do my best every single day to make the people in my life feel valued. I want them to know how important they are to me. I believe that the kind things you do and say make a difference in a persons life. I believe that saying what is in your heart is the most important thing you can do. Unfortunately, no matter how much of that belief I try to push out into the world, I never feel like I get it coming back to me. That's what makes me anxious. It makes me anxious to feel like I may not be worth the love of others. I may not be worthy of the love of my friends. I may not be worthy of being told that I am worthwhile. And I may not be worthy of being the most important person in someone else's life. Those unfortunate haunting feelings drive me crazy.

I stare these things in the face every single day. I do my best to bury it in a place where only I know it exists. The last thing I would want was for my issues to become a problem for someone else. I am hoping that by finding a way to put it in words makes it easier for me to cope with it.