Up. Up. Two little letters, a little scoop of a word in my mouth. I feel like I can pop it like I do pills. My psychiatrist seems to believe I can, to a certain extent.
To her credit, my anxiety has stayed away for two days now. As that’s two days more than when I’m not on the medication, I keep taking the pills.
But friends and family keep telling me to “just” do and be whatever way they believe is ideal. The old me would have been very stressed out by all this. But somehow, this past weekend, between hearing my sister is mad at me because I didn’t call her on her birthday while she was out of the country and telling my possessive mother I didn’t plan on living the rest of my life in the United States, I stopped letting life literally sicken me. I’ve felt fairly liberated from my mental prison these last two days. I’m not catastrophizing; I feel confident in the future, as uncertain as it seems right now; I’m even allowing myself to make mistakes without self-disgust and mortification consuming me with depression and psychosomatic symptoms of anxiety.
It seems almost silly to want only peace, as if there’s something more valuable out there, but I’m too small-minded to think about it. It’s such a basic human desire. Yet I literally feel pressured by my society to want a big house with white furniture, as if that’s the higher aspiration.
There are so many battles to wage with the world in this war against myself. I often feel like I’ve been awake for five years, and I still can’t fall asleep. There’s no falling asleep. I’ve got these two enemies, them and this screaming part of me. When the difference between them and me becomes vague, I have to be alert, ready to analyze and execute action.
—I realized just now, those are the words of a person who’s been traumatized. I’m tempted to say, see what I mean? I must always be alert—or the sardonic tricks of my mental illness will digest me.
But I won’t say that. Instead, I’m going to bed. I need sleep, and any problems I have will be here when I wake.
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