“Look at her, she probably thinks she is way better than anyone else.”
But I don’t. I stay quiet because I cannot engage myself in conversations, not because I think people are not good enough to be talked to, but because I think I am not good enough to be talked to.
Anxiety has made me like this. Anxiety has put an end to my social life way before it had even started.
I am always the shy one when it comes to hanging out in groups. I have a lot to say the majority of the time but the thing keeping me away from expressing myself is the thought I put behind every single word that comes out of my mouth.
The tone of voice I greet you with or the amount of interest I put into my sentences. Nothing goes unnoticed. Anxiety makes sure that I notice everything.
All I have ever wanted in life is to know how it feels like having self-confidence. How it feels like having no problems talking and exchanging opinions with others. The pure ability to make eye contact without sweating or cracking my knuckles until I’m in physical pain.
Just because I stare at my phone, at the floor, or I am counting the cracks on the wall behind your talking lips instead of focusing on the point you are trying to make, people assume I am rude.
Nodding my head instead of a welcoming “Good morning” makes my coworker think I am full of judgment, despise and derision.
But he is not familiar with my burning desire to talk to him, he is only familiar with the parts of me I don’t want to show. The ones that destroy me. He doesn’t know how many times I have skipped lunch because of him.
Because I was too shy, too embarrassed to ask him to move his plate out of the microwave. Or how many times I had to walk miles to get to work because it just seemed much easier than asking him not to use my parking space.
People get the vision of me being an asshole. But the real asshole here is my anxiety. The thing keeping me at home, keeping me away from my own life.
The voices in my head constantly yelling and telling me to double, even triple check everything I do. My movements, posture, body language and every combination of notes and sounds I make.
I just want to be normal, to have a normal life, a human life. This is not something I can wash away with pills, my mental health, or to be clearer: a lack of it is not something that I can live with anymore.
A widespread havoc on my inside is covered up with the most innocent smile and eyes full of “joy.” I am being attacked and destroyed by something I can’t escape from.
By something that is inside my own mind. I am on the verge of breaking and the only one whose fault it’s is myself. No matter how irrational that sounds, it’s more than real to me.
It’s not a choice you make, rather a choice that makes you.
All the logic in the world can’t keep my heart from hammering in my chest when I am about to go out with my friends. Getting ready for a night out is like getting ready for a battle.
By practicing my words and greetings I leave the door, with an abundance of apprehension in my thoughts, capturing the things that may go wrong and everything in between.
Anxiety makes me look like an asshole, it makes me turn into something I am in eternal denial for being.
It makes me lose myself, but in the same time, it is bringing me closer to myself, making me realize there is more to me than my mental illnesses.
There is more to anyone than their silence.
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A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.
