I am loathe to find a therapist. I’ve found excuses that range from not being able to afford to pay out of pocket and the inability to find someone who is in my network that I like. I am currently sucking it up, distracting myself with work and activities and ignoring that I suffer from a low to moderate level of anxiety. I pat myself on my back that my new yoga regimen is an anxiety reliever- and for a month or so now I’ve been able to delude myself into thinking that I have it under control.
And yet, I am still churning inwardly. My brain vacillates between my own desires and fears- to the reading and analysis of other’s desires and fears. These rarely align and I am torn between wanting to pacify my own feelings and pacifying others feelings. I am also hyper-aware that most people don’t give two shits that I am reading, analyzing and shifting my actions to accommodate them. They neither realize nor care. They are wafting on their own sea of shit, and don’t have the burden of empathetic anxiety.
This is my burden, my incessant anxiety around how my person effects other people.
I can strip away that burden on my yoga mat. For 45 minutes I can just focus on how my arms are burning as I rotate my hips in three legged dog. I can focus on my chest spiraling counterclockwise in chair and hone in on the muscles of my core. My brain willing my body to move only the areas that need to move, to keep my hips tucked and low, not moving, as I isolate my chest. The focus, the sweat, the music drowning out all the chatter and noise that constantly surround my brain. It’s amazing, healing and beautiful. It’s over after 45 minutes.
It’s almost like a train I hear in the distance. Like when Roland and I traveled across the country with RedDog and we would camp and hear the train whistle miles and miles away. The way we would whisper to RedDog, “Somethin’s Comin’!” and he would sit up, ears alert, his curly tail unfolding into a pointer position. His head darting back and forth, from the train tracks to me, his eyes imploring, “I hear it! Do you hear it? Something IS coming! It’s coming.” We couldn’t see it yet, but it was on it’s way and his fat, sausage body would shake in anticipation.
Somethings Coming.
This is the train whistle in the distance. The slight vibration in the breeze. The anticipation of another bout with anxiety. The wait escalating the anxiousness. The change in pressure palatable. And yet, I will batten down the hatches, I will slide into the storm shelter, I will waste away my day watching a television program I’ve already watched over 10 times and play spider solitaire on my kindle because that’s the level my brain wants to play. It wants the familiar, craves the consistency, desires the solitude, strives for detachment, denies the unexpected and forfeits all action for inaction.
It’s not how I want to see me. It’s not how I want others to see me. I want to be dynamic and a force to be reckoned with. I want to radiate confidence and ability and reliability and magical magnetism. I can usually fake it til I make it. I can usually drape myself in my counter-personality of Shoosha. I can usually drown boring, anxiety ridden, depressed Tricia in alcohol and extremism so that other’s never recognize that there is anyone else but Shoosha. I can usually get away with it. I will get away with it. But, just so you know…
Somethings Coming.
my best enemy 