Fighting Anxiety as a Communications Major
I never thought I would ever deserve to be in this picture;
I suppose I never truly thought things through when I chose my major while sitting on a psych ward bed, filling in my details to apply to university. Never mind that huge frantic fit i just threw moments ago; never mind the fact that I completely did not think myself capable of socializing outside the recovery community; and to hell with the fact that my father told me that there was no way I could be ready for university being the way I was.
Never mind. Anxiety will not win.
I walked into the gates of university clad in what I perceived as my power outfit of a black tank, cat welfare society scarf and cat spammed skirt with cheap-ass rubi heels on my first day as an undergraduate. I glanced around at all the other girls armored in layers of confidence, ripped jeans and ombre tendrils tucked in statement piece hats and I had never felt smaller.
Never mind. Anxiety will not win.
I began my first semester in UB with the worst outbreak that I labelled as craters on my face. Oh the unworthiness I felt in my existence and so badly did I pray to be able to attend classes covered in an invisible cloak so that I needn't look up to the sea of flawless faces of everyone around me. No amount of concealer could mask the sheer ugliness I displayed in juxtaposition to what appeared to be the backstage runway models of Karl Lagerfeld or dsquared2. I was tarnishing the standard of collective beauty, what a disgrace who should be banished to the fringes.
Never mind. Anxiety will not win.
I walked from lecture to lecture, typically caught in cycles of starvation, sitting in the front of class so that no one need notice that I exist, so I need not be aware of the people I assumed were all gossiping about me as my face, body and everything was an open invitation call for judgement. Surely, they must be thinking - "thank god I don't look bad like her, poor thing." I sat on the aisle seat, fourth from the front, so that I needn't have prime Frida Gustavssons in front of me, which in my mind, reminded me of the beauty that I never could have to fit in or be accepted.
Never mind. Anxiety will not win.
Lecture mates asked me out to have lunch with them numerous times but because I was too afraid of being judged for having the audacity to eat given how huge I saw myself as, I declined out of the fear. I finally agreed eventually at the start of the next semester and somehow being jammed in a food court with bustling uni students rushing to get their food, the chaos, the chirping excitement that interrupted each engaged party in the clique overshadowed any chance of my personal involvement. How extra was I being to intrude this perfect group dynamic? Why am I such an unwanted twat who dared to disrupt the glitz of this cheery posse of communications majors. Forget it Candice, you will never belong. I walked away from the table after barely eating anything and lied, saying that I had to comfort my friend, acting to be excessively engrossed in replying 'someone' on my phone. I slipped out of the scene, back to the dark where I felt like I should have stayed overcast in. How dare I take the leap into the unknown and believe that I was finally on the inside? Again, back to my traditional refuge behind the bathroom stall, proceeding to an empty stairwell, trying to catch my breath.
Self condemnations flitted around all the lobes of my brain like a game of rocket pinball on those old school dial-up computers.
The irrational fears of people bitching about me for being an attention whore for being overly dramatic to leave the lunch scene, for being weak, for being unworthy to be the anyone's presence lest my mission in life was to drag down others' happiness.
Presentation after presentation, my heart would go into spasmodic palpitations that I found impossible to grasp. "Look bitch, they all hate you, stop f*cking talking and shut your trap will you. You bossy prick. No one likes your ideas because they are stupid, just stop trying. Look how they love everyone else's proposals and look how they have all 'choped' seats in the row in front of you, throwing you to the second row alone. Everyone hates you." I swallowed that pummeling prong of harsh thought that seemed to be a far gentler sentence than what I ought to scold myself with. I took a breath and knew I was screwed from the start the stopwatch of our lecturer started; time's a ticking and that ticking was of the time elapsed for how long i held in each panic attack. Right after the alarm sounded, immersed in more reasons to beat myself over, I chant "look how you've let down your group mates again" as head back to my seat, sucking in all the tears as I forced myself to listen to all the other presentations. Hearing the smooth stream of successful presentations that succeeded mine was just a hammer to my coffin of self-destruction as I fantasized of the comfort of bruising, cutting, starving or purging I would run to once the lesson was over.
Let me tell you - there is nothing harder than holding in a panic attack in public.
I'm sorry that my anxiety made me an asshole who buried her head in tendrils of hair as I scraped through my scalp and viciously rummaged through my curtain of hair to shield my eyes of the greatness of other presentations that reminded me of how crap I was. What a disappointment all the time.
I worry about how doomed I am for my upcoming turn, I worry about how i'm not showing respect for my friends who are presenting, I worry about how to communicate my worry to my group mates, I worry about worrying them when they tell me to stop excessively worrying, then I worry more. The hallmark card of run-on lines was created by yours truly.
Fueled by the compulsion to buy a blade and I took off after a quiz after seeing the one lecture mate who made me bawl after she cornered me in the previous semester. My anxiety sets into overdrive as my defense mechanism printer pulls a frustrating paper jam whenever she sits in front of me. I wanted to run but I was forced to sit behind her for a quiz that day. I screwed up the quiz which was the trigger finger for my inability to breathe properly. Tears started rolling down my cheeks, yet the lesson was to continue.
Pull yourself together
suck in the tears
do it bitch you hear me
no i need to buy a blade
i need it now
i can't focus
shit i will lose participation points by exiting the lecture theater
crap what do i do
I try to smile away the tears, hoping that the upward turn of my lips would send ripples to the rest of my face and turn my eyes into Asian crescents, inhibiting the eek of any tears from my eyes
I run to the bathroom stall and my cry so hard that my temples get locked into a tension headache and the space behind my eyes stings as I jab my phone edge against my thigh hollering so loudly for help inside while maintaining suffocated cries. How can I go back in like this. Think of what people will say, imagine all the ice stares that will greet you when you re-enter, imagine their rolled eyes as they see a pathetic bitch like you with your reddened face, surely they must be looking down on you...think. think. think. what-if...
Yet, Anxiety has not won and let me tell you why:
I still feel like the outsider looking in, who wants in, who will never ever be in but
I am done with letting the fear of what-if stopping me from ever trying. Look remember the girl who dived into that application, choosing my major as communications, involving a copious amount of social interaction when I am otherwise a completely socially inept turd-face.
If I get hurt, so be it.
It scares me so badly but I am done with allowing fear to cripple any chance of jumping into what could very well be the best years of my life, because
if i allow another second to submit to the rules social anxiety prescribes as my daily dose of unworthiness, I shall never know what it means to be truly alive.
The fear will always linger, I still feel incredibly out of place and unwanted more often than I wish even if my uni friends assure me otherwise.
It is time to take a break from the merciless demon that tells you that everyone hates you 0 and start believing the real voices of people around you - for perhaps they are speaking the truth that will relinquish you from your exhausting cycle of assuming the worst.
Never mind. Anxiety will NEVER win.
The girl who took me in in semester one - for without you, my story may have stayed in the muck xx
The girl who got me through so many storms this semester - i love you so much, i made you a telegram sticker pack of all your ekman-engineered facial expressions - thank you hun xx
And I'll never forget - every single one of you who made me brave, each in your own ways and tolerated all my nonsense xx