Anxiety and the Art of Healy…I Mean Healing

(source)

A music video for a song I adore was released a few weeks ago. In the video for “Someone Else,” The 1975 frontman Matty Healy tries to connect with a motionless human sitting in his apartment, fails, then packs up and stumbles around a city drunk and heartbroken. Among other things: he gets cornered and beaten up while riding hia skateboard, has sex in a car, and gets strange stares from a couple in a diner. During the last minute or so of the video, the perpetrators of his beating, his sexual partner, and his voyeurs all turn out to be…him. 

Even though one song was playing another started in my head, an older song my family loved to play on our Wii Rock Band (back in the day when that was a thing): Lit, “My Own Worst Enemy.” I still remember my dad laughing at the lyrics, “It's no surprise to me/I am my own worst enemy/'Cause every now and then I kick the living shit out of me.”

The “Somebody Else” video got me thinking how, after weeks of feeling racked by severe anxiety, that perhaps I was acting as the barrier to my own healing. 

This is not to say that my or anyone else’s mental illness is all up to them to “overcome.” Anxiety is a serious mental illness that cannot be cured by simply “not worrying” anymore, or putting in a good hour of mediation everyday. Anxiety is a mental rut. An obsessive, automatic way of thinking that has a way of making itself appear larger than yourself. I felt, and still feel on many days, overshadowed by this version of myself that is a failure at everything she tries, that will end up in any trouble and despair and trauma that wants to find her. It’s strange to feel at the mercy of…yourself. Especially when you don’t want to live how your mind seems to be forcing you to live. 

And that’s where depression likes to meet up with anxiety, convincing you you’ll always be this exhausted by yourself, and it’s all your fault, so why bother doing anything. If you think this is dramatic, or can’t relate, I truly hope you are living your life without these mental barriers. 

Anxiety has a way of making people and places and familiar sounds and smells seem either terrifying or idealistic or maybe a little of both. It makes you feel as if the lives of other people are enormous and full compared to yours. You’re the person standing at the bus stop for a bus that will never come, and everyone else is in sunglasses, windows down whizzing past on the highway. Even when you tell yourself over and over it isn’t true, it can be hard to live out what you know. Even as I’m typing this, I wonder if it’ll feel good enough to me. If I should even put this out there. But it’s where I’m at. And like in Gary’s article, “Poetry and Depression,” he quotes Alli telling him “You can only write where you’re at.” That phrase has popped into my head countless times this summer, even though I haven’t been writing very much at all. 

While I have to be gentle with myself, (and I strongly encourage you to do the same if you’re struggling, let yourself have bad days) I’ve been feeling lately that part of me has to find the strength to fight back. Through all of my exhaustion, there must be some words to yell back. In the horror film The Bababdook, (which many believe to be an extended metaphor of the main character, single mother Amelia, struggling with mental illness) Amelia screams at the shadowy nothing (The Babadook doesn’t have any appearance in real life) “You are nothing. You're nothing! This is my house! You are trespassing in my house!” 

(source)

While I’m not a particular fan of horror films, a classmate showed this clip for a presentation and I remember trying to hide a few tears as the lights flicked back on. Like the sweaty, tired, and frightened Amelia, I felt, when I had the strength, I was screaming this at this something intangible but tortuous.  

Anxiety is part of who I am and will always be. But it is not the sole defining word encapsulating my personhood. I’ve chosen to let it be this summer. Lately, I think some part of me has been listening too closely to the trespassers in my house, my ear pressed against the door, the rest of me frozen. Those breaking-and-entering take the form of people and places in which trauma occurred. But I bet if I opened the door, felt myself breathing in my own body, I would find I truly do have my own space. My own house. 

While you might think I’m emo trash with including this song in this post (understandable) “My House” by Pvris has been one of my many poetic influences during my healing process. 

It’s taking time to gather the courage to open the door and scream back. I appreciate all the people who have been encouraging me, and moreover, being patient with me along the way.  

I guess this was just a really longwinded reminder to all other writers and suffers of anxiety out there: if you feel stifled, if you feel not like yourself, like you’re not being creative enough, like you’re not creating enough, it’s okay to sit back for a second. It’s okay to give yourself a break and enjoy other people’s art and allow it help you. And by art I don’t just mean paintings or songs, I also mean the comfort of someone squeezing your hand, or the exchange of an understanding glance, the art of empathy. 

It won’t always be this way. For you or for me. I wish you the best. 

Read more of Alyssa's work on Floodmark.

SaveSave