I love to procrastinate. A part of me is a little ashamed to admit that I put things off until the last second and then panic while trying to make things work. I find something intoxicating in pushing myself in those moments creatively (I don’t do this during professional occasions, preferring to be prepared and early instead). During the UKs second lockdown my anxiety was at its peak. Part of that was due to having spent the first lockdown in a shared house. An experience that for the first time in my life made me dislikes my fellow human beings (more on that in a later post). When I was finally in my own space in the second lockdown, after nine months, it became harder for me to shake the bad habits I’d accumulated during my previous residences. When you have to keep your life in one room you adapt your life to staying in that spot. Having the freedom to spend time in different spots in my flat is a luxury that I’m still learning to enjoy.
I’ve lived on my own before but never in a big city. Living in a shared house had prepared me in ways that I never expected. Mancunians are loud. Honestly, their voices have no other volume setting and it’s one of the many things I love until I’m hearing it at 4am when I need to sleep. Initially it was something that set my nerves on edge but then my brain labelled them as wilderness sounds along with birds and it didn’t bother me anymore. Also the walls of any building here are made of metaphoric cheese, sound travels everywhere and it’s impossible to be quiet. As someone with an acute sense of hearing for certain tones being able to hear my housemates talking across the house while I was on the second floor and on the opposite side of it took some acclimation. I’m a very patience person but at one point the entire situation escalated to a point where I wouldn’t leave my room for days at a time.
I’m sure that living in a shared house probably changed me on a psychological level. I started getting closer to two housemates, using them as an excuse to function and appear normal as well as an excuse not to push myself harder to focus or study. I couldn’t let the disgust of having to continually clean up other people’s mess (both physical and emotional) and weariness get to me but eventually it wore me down and it did. At this point my anxiety was having a field day. It needed to keep me alone in order to exist, to thrive, imagining dangers that didn’t exist. I remember at one point I had to tell myself that I had a date with a hungry squirrel in order to get myself out of my room and off to the park. Also I didn’t buy the bird seed as a form of decoration, but often the idea of encountering one of my housemates put me off completely. They weren’t terrible people. But I knew more things about them than I’d wanted to, I knew their secrets, fears, lowest points and triumphs and I just couldn’t LISTEN any more. The hardest thing was hoping they all got to places where their dreams became reality and on the days that held disappointment after disappointment for them trying to have enough hope for them when I had no energy whatsoever. I’m not a good liar but I’m excellent at hiding my pain and when you’re in a space where you’re absorbing others it’s quite unhealthy. It was also difficult having to be alert 24/7, not able to listen to albums because I unofficially had to be on call to diffuse some form of drama.
When I was finally moved to my own space the first thing I did was sleep….a lot, sometimes spending days in bed, feeling guilty afterwards, feeling ashamed that I no longer felt like the adventurer who could take on the world. My anxiety was this nagging voice that only shut up when I slept and when I was awake wasn’t the kindest. I’d somehow managed to become quite comfortable within these continual internal battles. Because the emotional gymnastics were the main focus of my thoughts I couldn’t seem to get around them so I didn’t bother. We talk about anxiety as fear but not about how it looks for examples to be right in order to keep us existing in fear. I use the word existing because you’re not living your life if anxiety controlling it.
Looking back I now realize I desperately needed the sleep to repair and re-orientate myself. I could recognize what my anxiety was doing but at times just didn’t have the energy to push against it. Eventually I just got into the habit of telling it to shut the fuck up whenever it would get out of control, which was a lot of fun. I stared arguing with it, telling it the worst that could happen is I could trip over my own two feet, but if I focus on going slowly and carefully I would be fine, and in fact, I was. Something as simple as putting one foot in front of the other actually helped more than I expected. That plus being on the lookout for things that make me smile. Also knowing myself and my own comfort zone helped immensely. Knowing what I could do to soothe my nerves (something as simple as humming The Bare Necessities) also helped. But probably the biggest thing that gets me over my now occasional anxiety is thinking of my family, how they do everything confidently and gracefully. I think about all the things they’ve accomplished even when it’s been terrifying and knowing that I have that background gives me the courage to keep trying as well as to fake it when I don’t (because it eventually leads to me genuinely feeling it).
Being an emotional and deeply feeling person is a pain in the ass sometimes (especially when some people just use you because of it), but I know that it’s something that makes me who I am. I’m in this space where I know longer want anxiety to stop me from trying to learn or experience life because there are so many things I have yet to accomplish. I know I’m going to look like a complete moron sometimes but that doesn’t scare me. In fact nothing has terrified me more than being held prisoner by my anxiety, knowing what it was doing but unable to change it, and since I never want to feel that way again I’m more than happy to fail and make mistakes in my effort to learn. Being true to myself is more important to me than having friends, being liked or famous.
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