excerpts from my anxiety diaries
The world is a mouth wide open.
/
If my anxiety had a face, I imagine it would look much like my own, growing and aging as my own grows and ages. Almond-shaped eyes that change from green to brown. A freckled nose. Full lips, pink and picked. Pale cheeks framed by frizzy brown curls.
There she is. A bitch called anxiety.
If I could look anxiety in the face and say one thing, I think I’d settle on, “Fuck you.”
I imagine she’d reply, “Fuck you, too.”
Or perhaps, she’d reply with a simple, “Thank you,” drenching her words with a bittersweet sap that would, as usual, stick in my mind.
/
Anxiety unfolded its presence in my life slowly, waiting for me to catch on and give it a name. Throughout my childhood, it creeped as an octopus does across the ocean floor, stretching its tentacles and changing its color to blend in with my surroundings. By the time of adolescence, all eight tentacles wrapped around my mind. Every time I managed to free myself of one, another grew back in its place.
When I look back on my childhood and try to pinpoint a moment or certain event that caused it all, I find only memories tainted with an emotion that, at the time, I didn’t have a word for. A therapist may disagree with me, may argue that there is an index trauma there somewhere, but I’ve never been to a therapist. So, maybe that’s my first problem.
/
Perhaps, my anxiety began in my mother’s womb as she held me closely, protecting me, making me acutely aware of everything from day one.
I was reluctant to enter this world. Born almost two weeks after my due date, I put my mom through fifteen hours of labor. You were worth it, she tells me now as she recounts the story of my birth. Two epidurals and an Oprah Winfrey marathon on TV couldn’t distract my mom from the pain I caused.
I imagine my little arms and legs pressed to the sides of her uterus, stubborn to leave. Struggling to remain warm and naïve, I sheltered in place. Maybe I was scared, confused, unsure of myself and my place in the world outside of the comfort zone I’d known for nine months.
Eventually, the doctors had to suction my head out, forcibly removing me despite my best efforts. I cried relentlessly, one of my personality quirks that never quite changed. After being placed in my mom’s arms, I clung to her on the outside just as I did on the inside. That sweet, sweet saint of a woman.
My first day on Earth set the tone for the rest of my days. I still cry, whether over birthday cards or sad commercials or no fucking reason at all. I still cling desperately to my mom. I’m still stubborn and reluctant about my place in this big, open world.
/
The repetitive reality of daily anxiety is quite simple, even mundane at times. It weaves itself throughout my moments, and I shove these moments aside the same way I would shove random batteries or promotional pens into that one kitchen drawer.
The thought that there could be a specific moment that I could tie all of my anxious moments back to seems comforting, but what if my index trauma is a collection of moments that morphed together over time to form one giant pit that sits in my stomach and refuses to go away?
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No matter how great I think I am at hiding it when I have something on my mind, I have a dead giveaway. My nervous tick involves picking the skin off of my lips with my fingernails. Disgusting, I know.
I wouldn’t really even call it a nervous habit. I’m not always nervous when I do it. Sometimes, it’s right before a presentation. Sometimes, it’s during a game of checkers with my husband, Josh. Sometimes, it happens when I’m listening intently to a conversation. It’s a natural reaction these days. Sometimes, I don’t even notice myself doing it until my lip is bleeding.
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When I was a kid, it was something different. I watched clocks. I bit the inside of my cheek. I touched my thumb and middle-finger together, making sure no part of the finger felt “untouched” or “unequal.” What has stayed the same is the amount of nervous energy in my body, bubbling up and over until it finds places to release: my fingers, my eyes, my teeth.
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There were three different clocks in the kitchen of my childhood home. One on the stove, one on the microwave, and one on the radio that sat on the counter next to the refrigerator. They all blinked lime green. One ran a little fast, one a little slower. I would sit still in my seat at the kitchen table while my eyes bounced back and forth from clock to clock to clock waiting until they all reflected the same time.
Inevitably, the fastest clock would change first and the harmony of the three would be disrupted. And it would start again. Back and forth. Clock to clock to clock until the slow one caught up, and they were all the same again. Harmony reinstated.
/
Once, at a sleepover in high school, my friends rearranged all of the picture frames in my bedroom while I was in the shower. I came out of the bathroom, my pink towel tucked tightly under my arms, and stopped in my tracks when I heard them giggling on my bed.
“What?” I asked suspiciously.
“Nothing, nothing!”
I walked slowly to my dresser to grab my pajamas when I noticed them. Some frames were angled slightly off. Some had swapped places. I quietly began fixing them as the girls giggled behind me.
“We wondered how long it would take you to notice,” one said.
“There’s more. Keep looking,” another chimed.
I laughed along with them, going around my room adjusting and fixing each item that was misplaced. The uneasy feeling in my stomach subsided once everything was back in its place.
/
I learned at an early age to make myself smaller in order for others to become larger, staying trapped in my own anxiety, embodying convenience.
Being an anxious person is one thing. Being an anxious people-pleaser is another beast entirely.
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I spend days rethinking all the small mistakes I have made in the past. I drive myself crazy over them. I obsess. I convince myself that I’ve grown as a human being and that my past actions don’t represent who I am now. I try to believe that. I pray to the point of finally reaching repentance, and I forgive myself only to be reminded of the same mistake again months later. And the cycle repeats.
My anxiety is weary yet relentless, and damn it, it will get the last word.
/
In the seventh grade, I started to do this thing where I would tell my mom every single mistake I ever made. As I remembered them, I regurgitated them to her, dispelling all of my small sins.
I stood in the garage after school, the coldness of winter eating at my bare toes, and cried into the cordless landline. “I helped Ashley cheat on her spelling test in the sixth grade, and I never got in trouble for it,” I said.
“Susan, baby, it is okay,” my mom answered, the noises of the pediatric clinic where she worked echoing through the phone.
I breathed relief into the receiver.
We are not a Catholic family, but my mom took on the role of my own private priest. I’d go to confession and vomit my sins. If I didn’t tell her a mistake I’d made, regardless of when it had occurred, it would sit heavy in my chest. I could feel it with every breath, like an ice cube stuck in my throat, never quite melting until I spoke the sin aloud, releasing it into the world where I would be judged and then forgiven. Except, my mom never judged me.
Even after we sat on my bed in my neon green bedroom and I confessed that I once “flashed” a digital camera—training bra on, folks—because all of the other girls in the PE locker room were doing it. Even after I pulled her aside at my grandmother’s birthday party and told her I played on websites that I (and probably any other kid) wasn’t supposed to but all of my classmates had accounts, so I wanted to join, too. Even after I admitted to learning I did indeed have text messaging on my flip-phone in the fifth grade, and I used it to text a boy from my class. Even though my dad would flip his lid if he knew. She never judged.
Her dark eyebrows furrowed to meet in the middle as she tried to keep up with my mix of words and tears. She’d hold my hand in hers and tell me to forget about it. “It’s over and done with, Susan,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s gone.”
And just like that, it was gone.
As any great priest does, my mom kept my secrets. I wonder now what she really thought of it all. Did she see anxiety at work in the rush of my confessions? Did she take pity on her daughter for feeling so chained to her petty mistakes?
Did she see herself reflected in me in those moments?
/
My anxiety paired with my specific personality creates this really fun dynamic where I have a relentless urge to please people and a deep desire to learn to stand up for myself. The urge to please people typically wins out.
Even when, at the annual Christmas parade in my grandparents’ hometown, distant family members casually made me aware that I would never make any money pursuing an English degree. Unless, of course, I decided to be a teacher. I chuckled. I sipped my hot chocolate and looked away.
Even when, at the age of 24, a doctor sat me down to explain to me how a woman’s period worked. The words “plowing the field” were used several times in that explanation, and I waited patiently for him to stop talking. I didn’t bring up the fact that I have been deeply, closely familiar with how a period works since the age of 12. I didn’t make not one comment about how my uterus was not, in fact, a piece of farmland.
Even when, at the age of 16, a man whistled at me from a couple cars back at a red stoplight, windows down, as he jerked off and laughed. I rolled up my window, tears in my eyes, and sped off as soon as the light turned green, looking back every few seconds to make sure his beat-up Volvo wasn’t following me.
It is only ever after when I think of the right thing to do or say, and I recreate the scenario again in my head with me starring as my own heroine. I envy her, this made-up, braver version of myself.
/
When I was 19, I met the man who would one day become my husband. Josh and I met through mutual friends one weekend in Myrtle Beach and shared our first kiss in a strip club.
One week later, he drove three hours to visit me in my hometown. The week after that I drove three hours to visit him in Norfolk, Virginia where he was stationed.
Love is not a two-way street. Love is one car with a driver and a passenger, who both take turns behind the wheel.
/
A high school classmate once told me that she thought I was a bitch before she actually got to know me. When I asked her why, she said it was because I never spoke up in groups of people. I was consistent in my sitting, listening, observing. My closed lips projected a sense of arrogance, of better-ness.
The truth was I never had much to say. Or others just talked more loudly. Or got to their point more quickly. Other people didn’t have to put together a perfect sentence before opening their mouths and wouldn’t obsess about the sentence after it left their parted lips. Others didn’t understand it was safer to just stay quiet.
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Am I being nice enough? Am I being too nice? Did I talk enough or ask weird, probing questions? Did I talk too much?
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Having anxiety can sometimes feel like being the sober one at a party. You have to be responsible in case other people are not. You consider every possible worst-case scenario and how to solve it should it arise. You’re the one who’s ready to leave even though everyone else is having a grand ole time.
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I went to a random house party in college and got drunk off UV Blue Vodka. My roommate led me by hand into the kitchen. We stood by the stove and took a shot of Fireball from red plastic cups. Within seconds of taking the shot, I turned and vomited in the recycling bin sitting next to the fridge. I wiped my mouth with a potholder laying on the stovetop.
I still think about this night and feel bad for making total strangers clean up my puke. I hope they found it in themselves to forgive me.
The little voices in my head attempt to coax me into believing that I’m not good enough when I am most vulnerable and susceptible to give in.
/
I sat on the bright white comforter in our new home in Key West, Florida. The sunshine poured in through the slats of the blinds. I closed the blinds. The sunshine always calls to me, but today, I felt guilty about feeling anxious while the sun was shining.
I worked so hard to get each room of our house exactly the way I had wanted it, especially our bedroom. After squeezing the king-sized mattress and bedframe through the bedroom door, there was little room for anything else to fit. I color-coded my closet. I put blue embroidered pillows on the bed. I hung a sign with 1 Corinthians 13 printed on it on the wall, to remind us of what love should be every night before we went to sleep. There was nothing I could do about the doors. In true Key West style, we don’t actually have any doors in our house. Only closet-like doors that don’t have locks.
Despite not even having real doors, I felt trapped. I wanted to leave the house but didn’t know where to go. I looked up coffee shops I could go to. I googled “things to do in Key West, Florida.” I opened books I wanted to read and put them down after rereading page 1 over and over.
I was alone in a way I had never experienced before.
I stood up from our bed and rummaged through the shelves of medicine in our closet. I grabbed one of my mom’s Xanax that she sent with me when we first moved.
“You may need them,” she said before I left.
I swallowed it without water and felt the little pill slip down my dry throat.
Staring at the remaining pills in the little bag, I counted four. My mom had sent me with five.
I’ve never been prescribed medication to make my anxiety go away. I’ve never openly talked to anyone about my anxiety before, except for my husband, Josh. I’ve rationalized that taking medicine would make me weak. It would be my admittance to the fact that something is wrong with me, that I need to take medicine to correct it.
I shoved the plastic bag past all of Josh’s hanging shirts to the back of the closet. That’s where they belonged because I could do this myself.
My mom has always told me I’m a stubborn person. I think on this day, I started to believe her.
/
I used to view my anxiety as an abstract painting. I stood back away from it, observing from an appropriate distance. The colors and shapes swirled together to form something impressionistic, blurred, maybe symbolic. Perfectly framed and kept. But as the years have passed by, I’ve taken steps closer. I inch toward the painting and am finding that it’s not abstract at all. It’s realism in its truest form. It escapes beyond its frame; it knows no borders and takes up entire walls with detailed strokes and exact shades of color. It’s less abstract than it has ever been and I’m seeing it for the first time, up close.
Susan Abercrombie is a recent graduate of her Master of Arts in Creative Writing. She currently resides in Wilmington, NC with her husband, Josh, and their pit bull, Honey. As an emerging writer, her work has been featured in both the Hive Avenue Literary Journal as well as The Write Launch.