Thoughts I Had While Barely Managing to Contain Feelings of Overwhelming Anxiety Through a Seven-Hour Shift ​

Life, broadly speaking, is exhausting.

Of course, that’s not true all the time. Life is also fun, and full of opportunities, and interesting, and bright. But there are times when it’s hard to see and appreciate all of that past the stress that’s bogging you down. There’s a lot of good in my life right now: I’ve been connecting with new people, there’s change (of the optimistic variety) on the horizon, and the weather is slowly but surely warming up for spring. Before long my best friend will be home from Vancouver and I’ll be making plans for summer nights with the people I love the most. But right this moment – today, the coming week, these past few months – I’m also feeling a lot of stress pile up, for all kinds of reasons. There are uncertainties and looming deadlines and that impending change, which is scary for me even if it’s also going to bring good things. I’ve never coped well with change.

Yesterday I was really struggling. It was the kind of day when I seemed to be overwhelmed and sensitive right from the get-go. On top of all kinds of stress at home, I had a busy workday and a lot of new faces around me – because I work in a garden centre, there are a lot of new hires this time of year, and being surrounded by new people just makes me jittery. The compound effect of all the ambient stress in my life and just one kind of rough day was an intense, unshakeable feeling of anxiety.

I’m no stranger to anxiety. I’ve been dealing with it since I was just barely four years old – since before I can really remember, honestly – and went undiagnosed and untreated for a solid decade after that. I was in high school when I began the long process of treating my anxiety, and another ten years later, it’s still a work in progress. That said, I haven’t had a bona fide anxiety attack in a couple years now, and it’s unusual for me to feel strong or lasting physical symptoms without a single, definable cause. But I spent most of my day yesterday teetering on the edge of an anxiety attack, barely managing to stay composed through my workday.

I’ve always prided myself on my ability to express my feelings in words, but I’ve also always struggled to really encapsulate my anxiety in ways that are truly effective and representative of my experiences. It’s really important to me that I can communicate with the people around me – and so when I’m upset or anxious, my never-ending internal monologue often turns to those feelings, rolling words and phrases around for hours in an attempt to refine them into something useful. Yesterday was no exception, and I had a lot of thoughts about how to explain the way I was feeling.

Late last night, I dumped a lot of those thoughts out onto a screen, and when I was done, I had this.

Thoughts I Had While Barely Managing to Contain Feelings of Overwhelming Anxiety Through a Seven-Hour Shift

1
I’m in Brain Hell.
I’m in Anxiety Hell?
My brain went to space—

my brain is in Space Hell.


2
Oh. My chest is tight.
For the longest time I never really understood that phrase.
I accepted it, but I didn’t
get it.
Now I get it.
I really need to breathe.

How long is this going to last?

3
I kind of want to die.
Not in like,
the real way.
Or the sad way.
It’s more manic.
(But even then—
I’ve seen people get manic.
It’s scary.
I’m not that.
I just think I’m gonna burst like a high-speed dandelion
the next time someone touches me.)

I kind of wanna die but
there’s no one here I can say that to.
You can pretend you’re neurotypical and say it
but then people laugh it off and say ‘me too’
and it’s not cathartic
because you know they don’t know what you mean.
You can say it like you mean it
but then you’ll scare them.
You need someone who knows you, and
understands the way your brain works
to say it and know it’s properly appreciated.

There’s no one here today I could say it to.

4
It’s kind of like...
Nausea.
But not really. Not quite.
It’s in the wrong place?
And it’s not like I’m gonna throw up—
It’s more like I’m…

seasick?

Yeah. It’s like seasickness. But.
It’s up behind my sternum.

I don’t get seasick on boats.

That figures.

5
I still can’t quite breathe.

My head is too light.

It’s floating away.

6
I need a really long hug.

If anyone hugs me,
I think I’ll burst into tears.

6.5
Please, please don’t touch me.

7
If one more stranger talks to me
I’m going to vibrate right out of my skin.
Something is bubbling up from inside and it’s
going to burst my flimsy seams
and spill all over the floor.

8
Whatever organ my feelings live in—
because it’s not my brain, or my heart;
it’s something more primal, more basic than that—
it’s lodged behind my breastbone.
And it has gas.

9
I want to disintegrate.
I want to completely dematerialize.
I want to be a small pile of dust here on the pavement
and someone can sweep me up and dump me into that garbage can over there.
Later I’ll go into the dumpster out back
and eventually into an overstuffed landfill.
My existence will be simple
and I won’t have enough of a brain left
to be upset about my impact on climate change.

If I lived in a landfill now,
as I am,
I would definitely worry too much about climate change.

10
I just strung together multiple coherent sentences
for someone I like but wasn’t prepared to talk to
and I only overshared once.
And only mildly.
That’s it for the day.
I’m toast.
I honestly can’t do any more.
It’s time to go lay under my weighted blanket
and read stupid lifestyle magazine articles
until I fall dead asleep.