Trying to stay in control of my life and my fear is like
trying to carry around a bit of water in my hands, and watching it slip through
my fingers. I can’t contain it all, and I panic. The need to control my pocket of the
universe, but realizing that I can’t, is unsettling. It precipitates a
dysphoria that makes me question reality, and I retreat further into the strange
fog I feel whenever something is out of place, when something goes wrong. Sometimes
it’s way too much to handle. I struggle to control my thoughts, and I hate the
feeling that I’m slipping.
I don’t think I’ve ever once, at first glance, seen reality
as plain as it is supposed to be. I used to wear these sepia-toned sunglasses
everywhere when I was sixteen, because I liked the way the world looked through
them- like an old photograph, like it was always autumn. I think about that,
and I think about how everything I perceive around me is so, so bizarrely
different from what it really is.
I don’t understand people, and I struggle to understand how
the world works. I imagine situations and outcomes so intensely that when it’s
finally revealed to me that I was wrong the whole time, or that I overreacted,
that this never really happened, that I made up the entire thing in my mind,
I’m floored. I didn’t understand how powerful a mind is until I was in the emergency
room for what I was sure was a heart attack, but was really a psychosomatic
reaction to anxiety. I felt like I was dying, so I believed I was.
Maybe it’s easy for most people to view others as a whole:
complex beings capable of different emotions, motivations, courses of action, cohesive
and complete.That’s how people are, and that’s how I should look at them. But that
is hard for me, and there are few people in my life who transcend this judgment.
My image of others is influenced only by their reaction to me. I’m so focused
on avoiding loss and conflict that I’m compartmentalizing people into
categories that are completely one-dimensional so that I can process these
feelings and assess the situation. People aren’t complex individuals, they’re a
reflection of how they’ve hurt me.
The worst is that I can see it happening, and I know that
it’s happening, so I tell myself it’s all in my head. I think logically about
the situation, but no matter what, I can never get past what I feel. When I’m
afraid to be in a place, when I panic about something, I know there’s no real
reason to. What I’m feeling is just my brain telling me I’m in danger when I’m
really not. Everything feels like I’m going to die, but it’s just some
electrical impulses, telling me this happened once, so it must happen again. I
can’t drive on this road, I can’t go back to this building, I won’t go down
that street. I won’t listen to that song.
I don’t want to view the world through the lens of my
traumas. I need to control everything, and when I can’t, I feel like I’m dying.
When I come out of the fog and realize that the reality I’m experiencing is so
far removed from what is actually happening, I feel completely lost and
defective, and rarely relieved. My distorted thoughts and rampant anxieties
have had such a hold on my life, and the edges of my reality have been frayed
and faded more and more every year. I would struggle to tell you what real life
is anymore. Some days are easier than others, and some days, the world is
clearer.
Changing your thinking patterns, or altering your framework on
how to live your life so that you can view situations logically and see things
for how they really are seems so much easier said than done. Often times the
thing you perceive to be a problem or a threat really isn’t one at all, and it
may just be the way you’re looking at it. It takes thorough self-awareness and
the disturbing notion that maybe you’ve been wrong this whole time. Nobody
wants to think that.
Part of the process is freeing yourself from the idea that
you’re helpless, that you’re a victim. Someone used to tell me, “You think
you’re this helpless little being, that you don’t have any control in what
happens to you. You can’t think like that. It’s not helping you.” This person
said a lot of really awful things to me too, and maybe that’s why we don’t talk
anymore. But they knew me well enough, and sometimes they were right. “You can
leave the house. You can talk to that person. People don’t hate you, just
because you haven’t met them yet.” You’re the only person who can control how others make you feel. The world isn’t inherently dangerous, and you need to learn that. The problem is, you’re waiting for someone to do it for you. What you
need to learn is that you’re the only person who’s in control of your life, and
whether you believe it or not, that’s true.
They said: you have to drive on that road, you have to run
down that street, you have to reach out to someone, even if you’re afraid of
what they might say, because if you don’t, you’ll never grow.
