Anxiety in 3/4 Time
A massive fuck you to Ms. Frizzle.
Article by Frances Thyer, art by Isabella Hageman
My friend asked me the other day why I listen to music. We were in the kitchen cooking dinner listening to Wisdom by Brian Jonestown Massacre, and I was midway through a ten minute rant about how the lead singer was the most talented psychedelic rock artist of the 90’s. I didn’t mean to lie to her, but I responded that I listened to music because I get so excited finding new artists with which I launch all-consuming obsessions. If I had thought more on the subject, I think what I would have said was: you can count on good music to be good, and that there’s always going to be more of it. Essentially, music is controllable. It’s a tool to manage how overwhelming and scary the world feels. I’ve thought about this conversation a lot, since a few days later she made a joke about how it must be hard for me to have a thought if I’m blaring music constantly.
Every normal person appreciates music all the time, in various ways. Then again, normalcy to me is utilizing other people’s heavy thoughts in song to quiet your own. I wonder if my tolerance for stress wasn’t equivalent to a lightweight freshman after a beer and a half, I wouldn’t need to overwhelm my ears in order to subdue my brain.
On the first day of fifth block, my teacher was laughing about the overly-complex nature of some critically acclaimed film when I felt my (now) occasional panic creeping up my chest and into my throat. For me, panic attacks are the physical, unpredictable, scary manifestations of anxiety disorders. It’s how I imagine unwilling subjects of the Magic School Bus would have felt. It’s a bus full of tiny people invading your body with an ease and absolute control that, I could only assume, would feel like a massive fuck you.
I told my roommate the other day that for all the work that I’ve done to alleviate my anxiety, debilitating unsteadiness feels like a persistent and elusive stalker, forcing you to check the mirror, since odds are, it’s following you a few cars behind. Panic pushes me along a revolving door, where illogical fear is a never-ending drawback of existing. I am tired, so that’s fine. There are bigger things to talk about.
As a reluctant companion of chronic anxiety, I think I’ve become numb to some of the regular-person anxieties that can be useful. My mom had been calling me sporadically throughout the week before fifth block, giving updates on the status of my grandmother who was nearing the end of her life. I felt horrible all day after my panic filled first Monday, with the tingly hard-to-breathe feeling that years of self-preservation and behavioral therapy hadn’t magically mended. It didn’t occur to me that the heaviness in my chest could be related to the impending death. I just was angry with myself for letting my day be once again derailed by my mind’s intangible, permanent houseguest.
I know what I like to do, and what I don’t. I am someone who likes to do things. I like art. I like being outside, and when asked, I have enough sweet memories to convince you and I that I know myself and my needs. The thought of my psychiatrist inevitably having a field day with my cognitive dissonance does, on occasion, crawl out from the spot deep in my brain where I keep all my other contradictory knowledge. I want to go climbing, but I might cancel because the idea of leaving the apartment, with shaky hands and a burning knot in my chest, isn’t worth it. Without a reasonable explanation for my physical and mental state, I probably won’t say anything.
I don’t want to be ingenuine with people. Chronic anxiety is, at its core, stupid. The evolutionary step my great grandfather’s great grandfather missed that makes me feel the need to go into fight or flight mode while quietly sitting in class was probably important. While it is not something to apologize for, it is sure as hell not something to shout from the windows about.
A few weeks ago, I went home for my grandmother’s funeral. Watching as family members console one another through soft tears, I stepped outside, plugging in my headphones and breathing in the much needed fumes of a cheap cigarette I had found in a purse from high school. I didn’t cry, spending the rest of the day taking care of people I had always perceived as much more achieved and competent than I could ever be. I believe that change in oneself is an underappreciated relief of growing up, and coming home to a family and sense of self that you no longer recognize is not easy to accept. Coming to the realization that both you and your parents are growing is incredibly strange.
There is a misconception that personal transformation and emotional competency means that anxious thoughts must have just diffused from your brain. There is a lot of shame that comes along with openly being anxious as we get older and constantly hope to be perceived as capable.
With anxiety attacks and just fear as a whole, you find yourself impoloding and exploding simultaneously; you occasionally say erratic things to others as the real insane thoughts about yourself ricochet around your brain. The wake of your actions is ultimately unimportant compared to the burden of waking up the next day and just having to be okay. Acknowledging the heaviness of something that has been a burden for your entire life feels, again, stupid.
A friend of mine released an album recently, with the pinnacle song named “When it Comes Time for Leaving”. It deals with the normal anxieties of growing up, taking care of yourself, and basically just existing. There is a particular line in the song where she talks about turning a rock over and waking up feelings you’ve put to rest. I’ve been talking a lot with my friends about the psychosomatic nature of chronic anxiety, and I think that this is a great example of that; as a normal person, you deal with things as they come at you, but I suppose being constantly anxious means you save those feelings until you are able to manage them, therefore reacting more erratic than your average person would. If circumstances allow, these feelings can feel like fireworks all intentionally set off at once, lighting in your stomach and allowing a moment of nausea and full reprieve.
I have been happy lately, so I have turned the rock over and found that I do feel better for it.
I suppose this article doesn’t argue for any cure-all for anxiety. There are many ways to rationalize anxiousness and fear, with no real answers. In my experience, there is no explanation or apology full enough to convince anyone.
Someone who I love sent me a playlist a bit ago with the kind of music that makes you feel so good that it invalidates your unreasonable fear about the world. Not to be that person with shortsighted advice about anxiety disorders, but listening to Axis: Bold As Love could be about as good of treatment advice as I can offer. Faces provides an opportunity for reflection on the magnitude of emotion and perception of mental disorders. MyKey asks if something “made you anxious or make you upset” in Was It Something I Said, which I suppose I can’t tell the difference between most of the time.
Ultimately, anxiety will continue taking unwilling passengers on the bus. I feel simultaneously like a victim of my mind and a perpetrator of continued hurting; at the core of anxiety is the need to feel in control, and that want can undermine our ability to take care of ourselves. Fighting for authority of your own headspace means that yourself and others will be judged and hurt. It is not intentional, and the best that anyone can do is to support those around us suffering.