Anxious

Don't rock the boat. After all, rocking the boat was what got you here in the first place.

-- "The End" (A Series of Unfortunate Events book 13)

I have social anxiety. In layman's terms, this means that I have panic attacks because I can't stop caring way too much about what other people think of me. I care because it's not enough to be good at what I do; my network is my greatest currency, so if people don't like me then they won't hire me, and I can't divorce my self worth or my artistry from this. My biggest fear is being a burden, and second to this is my fear that everyone hates me.

I have depression. What this means for me is that I rarely actively want to end my life, but I don't really actively want to live either. The guilt that this creates in me increases my ambivalence about living, becoming a vicious cycle (which is a concept I first learned about from a book about a mouse and a princess). It's not my fault that I'm depressed, but I think that by taking the blame I can lessen my mother's pain.

What do I write? How do I cram the entirety of my self into 600 words? How do I begin to unpack everything that is wrong with me, everything that makes me hurt, every mistake that I have made? Much easier to keep bouncing from hotel to hotel, living out of a suitcase, not realizing that by attempting to stay away from giving my emotional baggage a permanent home, I have given it permanent impermanence; I have let it rest in the core of myself, and I've convinced myself that I can live like this, or that I won't be around long enough for it to matter.

Two years ago I didn't think I would be alive right now. The act of writing this allows me time to sit with what I have just expressed, but when you read this, you have to make that time for yourself, if you need it. Two years ago, my future was something that terrified me more than it excited me. I wonder how much has changed. I'm still terrified, but part of me welcomes the terror because at least it's not overwhelming numbness.

The person for whom my life causes the most problems is myself. I tend to get stuck in a rabbit hole of thinking that I can't make both myself and others happy, so I might as well make everyone else happy, because the needs of the many are greater than the needs of the few (or the one, in this case). My mother tells me that I am her world; how can I take that away from her? I can't, so instead I ask how I can continue to exist while feeling that I am more burden than benefit? It's all in my head -- or is it?

It's impossible for everyone to like me. I know this, and yet when someone makes it clear that they don't like me, I shrivel. The inside of my head is wrong and deformed and I know this but I don't want anyone else to know it.

I haven't actually gotten any more self-aware; I just pretend that I have, and the pretense is sufficient excuse for me to avoid working on myself. I'm oblivious to the ways in which my actions affect others, and that's irresponsible of me. I can't afford to continue this way > I don't have energy or other resources to do anything differently than the way I've been doing it > how else can I change? It feels unethical to exist without trying to become better, and my efforts are clearly not enough.