Anxiety is weird. Even after you've gone for months of therapy and you've learned to get over it, it rears its head up in the background; reminding you it's always right around the corner, just you wait. Its volume turns up pretty high closer to deadlines as well. There was a time when I used to wake up in the morning and not be able to get out of the bed; too overwhelmed by the day that was to come. Now, I wake up in the morning, knowing I am not ready for the day but I force myself out of bed and decide to face it head on. There are moments where it is too overwhelming, you tell yourself you could throw it all away and run away to a place where nothing real exists. I do consider it, but only for a moment. Because I know I will be bored to death in that life. I love discovering papers and ideas and being excited about things to do, I don't really want to run away. I tell myself "Stop thinking about stupid shit and get back to work". So I do. But anxiety is right there, just behind the curtain, trying to rear its ugly head back at me. Time goes both slow and fast. Slow because you are doing nothing, just looking at time pass you by. Fast because you finally get into the zone - but so much time has passed, that you have lost all energy just worrying about how slowly the time was passing, and did nothing after all.
The thing is I have fought it, it has worked. But then, sometimes it escalates from 0 to 100 before I can even say the a of anxiety, and before I know it, I feel my heart beating through my chest, my palms leaving sweat all over my mouse, and all my effort to turn chaos into something in a handle-able manner goes out the window. And all that is left, is me screaming and hating and refusing to work. (Cue the weeks to my prelim deadline)
I leave for my internship tomorrow. This is something I have been excited about for about 4 months now. But now that it is close, all that seems to have disappeared. All that is left in focus, is the nervousness, the uncertainty, and all the ways in which I have no idea what I am going to do; which is not even true. I have some idea, and unless I explore it (it's right there, do research!), how the hell will I know?! This is how my unproductive phase begins - my brain negatively reinforcing my fear of failure over all the freaking success possibilities. It is so annoying to remember only the low moments especially when it is not time to do so; and to tire myself out so much, that I don't even remember what it is like to love working anymore. This type of shut down before I even begin makes me wonder whether I am even meant for academia, a place where I finally feel like I have found my own. All because my brain refuses to rationalize emotions the way I can so beautifully do when it comes to math or research or coding or cooking or music or any freaking thing in the world, precisely because they are freaking emotions. *sigh* This sucks. I don't want all my beautiful moments to be overpowered by random circular negative reinforcement circles that do nothing useful.
I don't want this to be a dire piece of writing. But it is how I feel. I try denying it because it feels stupid (even typing this feels stupid). It feels stupid because this means so much to me, and in some ways, it feels like I'm sabotaging it (or some activities of my brain are). It is as though my brain is creating an artificial danger situation, which is not at all existent, and here I am, firefighting the hell out of it. It ought to be easier than this, I shouldn't have to struggle to just get through each activity, I shouldn't have to fight against my own freaking brain.
This feels especially weird because I have given competitive exams, where I did believe it was a case of now or never, as did everyone around me where the scores pretty much determined my future. But, I just studied, I just worked, I don't think I even knew the a of anxiety. I fared more than just good, I did pretty well. I just remember being excited about learning, learning about newtonian physics, falling in love with organic chemistry, discovering calculus and the logical nature of computer science - and exams were just a thing. All my undergrad, despite some very subpar classes, I couldn't stop being excited learning about various aspects of Computer Engineering. I devoured textbooks, I loved discovering how algorithms work. There were frustrating moments, of course, but I didn't doubt for a moment that Computer Engineering was meant for me. Every class I took, took me a step closer to what I believed was my place.
And that's exactly why, I don't recognize this bubbling mass of anxiety that doesn't hold on to her excitement of discovering new things for too long. This is too new to me to be familiar with it. So I deny its existence with every fiber in my being trying to hide it under the carpet and there it lies, perfectly hidden for you to convince yourself that it doesn't exist, but that's not quite the truth, is it?
Maybe that is the key - to understand and accept it as a part of me as much as my excited self is me as well. To be kind, to be warm, like I would to a friend, and not push my anxious self into a corner. Honestly, this feels too personal to share, partly because writing always gets me to write the most intimate things I never would say out loud. Especially because hiding in the shadow of metaphors of pain comes naturally to me. But maybe talking about it explicitly is not a bad thing?
I guess, I logically know I can work through this and just maybe I believe (yes, font size intends to say exactly what you think it does). I know I have seen some successes (hey, I'm still here, right?), I have seen some breakthroughs in my time here as well as future breakthroughs in my head. The inherent optimist in me, wants to go "A change is gonna come" (You know where this is going, don't you?). Now that I have spent half an hour writing this and procrastinating, I'm gonna get to packing and hopefully looking forward to a life in California for the next three months.
And keeping in mind the foreshadowing I already provided (*wink wink*), I have to, have to share this song. Even though I know this song signifies the civil rights movement and is born from a very singular moment, these words (as music and poetry sometimes do) seem way too apt for me in this moment. As much as I want to give up and run away, I also want to believe, I also want to know it is not the end of everything.
I hope you listen to Aretha, who as always brings magic to this song, with her voice and her most beautiful rendering, and get lost in this moment of hope during times of need. I know I can do with a lot of hope right now.
