When you’re crippled with regular, unannounced bouts of anxiety often riddled with depression, it gets exhausting trying to maintain an optimistic demeanor and mean it. To even remain neutral toned during the most mundane of conversations takes effort and you can’t allow yourself to enjoy anything completely because a small part of you is constantly worried about how things will work out – or if they will at all.
I’ve spent a large part of the past three years with this deadly duo. They’ve crept up at family dinners, funerals, examinations, meetings, naps – they have been a tad bit too over-attached. They’ve groped my being at every possible turn and left me shaking. I’ve felt like I was tied to the back of their car and driven through the roughest road in town. Hell, I still have the scars. They came in without notice and left only after they’d taken every last reserve of resilience and optimism with them.
I can hate them for as long as I live or I can choose to look at them like the world’s most challenging gift (three guesses which one I’d rather pick)
Sometimes, in the most inconsequential of moments – looking at my dog sleeping peacefully, listening to my cousin’s silly school stories, watching the first Potter movie’s end, completing a challenging run, eating a comforting bowl of wonton soup …. I thank them. I thank them for making these moments of peace and calm all that much more intense.
Perhaps if I hadn’t spent all that time battling anxiety and depression, I would not fully appreciate the absence of despair and enjoy the little things. I would not have been so invested in upgrading myself to become a better version of myself.
For those of you who are still battling with the twins, I understand how messy it is and how beaten up it can leave you. But you always have the choice to take it with a pinch of salt and make the best of it.
Maybe someday we’ll wake up and not feel the stomach swoops, racing heartbeats or sudden dread. Maybe we won’t compulsively apologize or constantly keep expressing our love in an insecure blanket. We will have our little moments of happiness and calm with less gaps between two of them. And if we don’t, we’ll just make the best of every situation.
Until next time.
OscarPotterhead 