I’m an anxious person. I consider it a quirky personality trait, and one that hasn’t really seemed to scare anyone that matters away, yet.

Anxiety manifests itself in weird ways. Sometimes it is over nothing, sometimes it is over the idea of nothing. Usually, it is my own personal emotional trigger that creeps up when I’m least expecting it and sends me into a crumpled mass on the floor until my brain reboots and reminds me I require oxygen to function.

People with anxiety find ways to fight it; Healthy diet, sufficient sleep, robotic, high-intensity workout plans that generate serotonin.

I tread water in times of hardship with equal parts unending optimism and low-dose sarcasm, which may seem like opposites but somehow works for me.

I absorb other people’s feelings, whether I want them or not. When someone experiences a personal victory, I will feel every ounce of their enthusiasm and my brain will dose me with oxytocin on their behalf. If someone tells me a story about something terrible, or painful that happened to them, I walk away wearing their feelings; drenched in a cloak of someone else’s darkness that sometimes takes days to shrug off.

The world is hard right now.

But you don’t need me to tell you that.

I’ve had to ask my husband to filter what he tells me because this cloak is getting so heavy I can barely keep my head up, and I can feel its tattered edges dragging my head underwater.

But I don’t want to be completely out of touch.

The world needs witnesses to what is happening so maybe someday we can be better, and never do it again.

Where is the balance? Where is the line?

I typically try to combat negativity and fear with self-deprecating humor and bad jokes, but that is getting harder. Writing, a hobby that is typically cathartic is cumbersome and daunting. Drafting the title of this article took five minutes, and the anxiety of the permalink creating a slug and bench-marking my indecision made my heart rate spike.

My novels have been shoved on the proverbial shelves, being unable to focus long enough to devote any actual attention to a fictional narrative that feels like it won’t make a difference to anyone. My energy is displaced. Focusing on cleaning, staring at the walls, or rereading the same few pages of a book who’s title I can’t remember.

The news reports are devastating. Heart-breaking. Nauseating.

Retweets are spreading fake and real news; a virus of toxicity that feels like its straight out of a dystopian novella I’d like to slam shut and set fire to.

I don’t have a meaningful message to wrap this up with. The knob to my optimism has been turned to low at the moment, and I’m open to any and all suggestions you guys have to turn it back up to 11.

I’m in a place where I want to help. I want to make a difference.

But I also want to survive the vicious mental barrage of feelings and devastation.

Do me a favor and please be nice to one another. Maybe we could start there, and just put one foot in front of the other.

Fill out of the forms below to join our mailing list. I promise the semi-annual newsletter while be more optimistic and sarcastic than this 😉

 

Newsletter