It's Not That Bad #13: I imagine a life without anxiety a lot.

+ this month's reading, watching and listening recommendations

I imagine a life without anxiety a lot. How people enjoy fairground rides and aren’t all-consumed by a weird rattling noise they hear. How someone can just leave the house without making sure they have four alternate routes etched onto their brain, even though it’s only a twenty five minute journey. Those people I see in audiences who raise their hand and ask a question, without having had to recite it to themselves over and over until they’ve missed the chance to ask. I want to be someone who just has fun. Who can shake their hair back and truly dance like nobody’s watching. I worry about being perceived and not being noticed in equal measures. Everything I do feels counterproductive and maybe that’s totally okay. But maybe it’s not and I’m wrong and why can’t I just do karaoke like my friends can? Without my heart beat raising and my hands shaking. It never seems to matter how safe the space is or how loved I am in a room. Or how many times I do it. People always say something will get easier the more times I do it, but I’ve not found that to be true.

louisaachoi

A post shared by Louisa Renee Choi (@louisaachoi)

I don’t have the answers. I can’t sit here and type that this *magic smoothie* or walking 20k steps a day or breathing in a specific way will do anything. I’ve found things that soothe me. They help. but, I’ve lived with anxiety for a very very long time now and it’s not gone anywhere. I take SSRIs, I go to therapy, I eat my greens, I see friends, I love hard, I go swimming, I walk, I read, I write, I listen: and yet, here I am. Unable to sleep because I have to get a train in the morning or because my cat is meowing weirdly or because someone said something to me in a weird tone four days ago. I’ve written about anxiety so much in the past that I worry people are getting bored of me harping on; but everything I’ve written has been slightly different, because every anxious thought it slightly different. It’s the same beast, a dragon-mixed-with-a-donkey like in Shrek, but sometimes it’s wearing chunky gold earrings and other times it’s in a top hat.

If you’re like me, sometimes you’re a soup of depression-and-anxiety. Anxiety a clam chowder with chunky bits and depression a thin velouté: mixed together and splitting like olive oil and balsamic. They don’t mix well, they shouldn’t be paired together, but in some humans - here we are. For me, this soup cocktail manifests in pure exhaustion. Exhaustion because my anxiety keeps me running around and my brain going at light speed, but it’s battling a body that’s moving through tar. But, I get through. Most of the time. I open the curtains, and melt into a bath, and cook something colourful. The light floods in, and it stays for a little while.

When I write pieces like this sometimes I feel shame. Vulnerability has turned into a currency online, and I’ve been in many a situation where editors have squeezed out sadness from me like they’re juicing a lemon. They want me to sour a page; but this is why I have a newsletter, now. Because the vulnerability here is for me, for you, for us. It’s not being prodded out of me. It just, is. And I hope it feels like a hand hold to someone.