I find it’s difficult to speak the things I want to, so I draw and I write to express how I feel. I draw and I write and I want people to see what I do, to know what I’m going through but every thought that I have ends up in the same, never-ending loop of contradiction.
What if I’m not good enough? What if I’m doing this for the wrong reasons? How will people see me? Am I doing this for attention? Am I making this up in my head? I know I don’t have all the facts but what if the ones I do have are wrong, or I get them wrong?
I can never understand what thoughts are really mine. I know I have my own thoughts but separating my thoughts from anxiety’s thoughts, never ceases to fail time and time again.
It’s like, I can see the light at the end of a tunnel, but I just keep walking and walking, going in loops, never finding the light.
I know I’m not the only person who feels like this, but I also know that some people ‘feel’ like this because they want attention.
There are points when I feel I want attention. I want one person, to talk to me and listen to me and hug me. I don’t want a group - that’s too many people. I don’t want to be alone either though - it makes me more sad.
The pressure in my head builds up, I try to keep in the tears but when that pressure finally becomes too much, I can’t stop. I begin to shake, I get a burst of adrenaline but can’t move. I feel frozen in place but fully awake and alive. Everything around me intensifies, the clock ticking, the children screaming, the old ladies laughing, the young man running his everyday route. I hear the chewing of people surrounding me and I hear every conversation at once, but nothing processes until one sentence triggers something in my head.
Once that one thing is said, I want to ask for help, I want to ask for a hug but the loop of contradiction is back.
A hug will help. They won’t care. What if they do? They will think I’m annoying and feel like they have to help me. I need to talk to someone. I’m doing this for attention. I’m not actually anxious. My brain is making it up. No it’s not. This is real. I want to scream but I can’t. I’m frozen solid.
I want to run a mile and write a novel at the same time but all I can do is sit completely still, except for the rapid shaking occurring throughout my whole body, as the tears stroll down my face and the few people that notice stare or ask if I’m okay - causing more tears to fall.
I know I’m not okay, I want a hug but I don’t want you to focus and be around me when you have a life. I don’t want to be an inconvenience but I need you to be here for me.
I cry more, knowing that you want to help but I want to do this alone because It’s not your responsibility and I’m just a kid in need of attention so don’t supply me it.
I don’t need it though. I know that’s not what I mean when I want a hug. I’m not searching for confirmation, I’m searching for 3 seconds of comfort.
Go away, I’m fine. I don’t need help. I’m okay.
I cry and shake and mix my thoughts into a salad of words.
I’m an attention whore, only I’m not. I’m overdramatic, only I know that’s not true. I don’t know who to trust, but I know exactly the answer to whom I can. I’m jealous, but I say I’m just tired and confused. I feel betrayed, when I haven’t been.
I know the facts but without 100% solid evidence, I can never convince myself of them. The only problem though, is that you can never get 100% evidence.
After the rush of emotions and feelings come, the want of action but the contradicting thoughts towards everything, comes the darkness.
Completely blank. Nothing.
I have no thoughts roaming around my brain. No imagination. No emotion. I am a blank canvas with a straight line through it.
I can talk, but my replies are short, simplified, angry sometimes. Everything goes in the order of a train rather than a swarm of flies. Each word comes to mind in one freight cart.
No. Emotions. No. Thoughts.
I want to write, so I do. I want to draw, so I do. I don’t want to talk to anyone but I do because it’s rude if I don’t.
I draw emptiness. I draw scrambled thoughts. I draw emotion. I draw the first thing that comes to mind. I draw stress. I draw all of this into one picture and name it “Anxiety.”
After the emptiness persists inside me for a little while, the thoughts come. Not the kind of thoughts that I previously had though.
No. Dark thoughts. I separate myself from the world.
I think about death, about the darkness. Tears stream down my face, but I still feel empty.
The first time I ever had dark thoughts, it killed me. I never understood how people would have them. How they could think such things. I promised myself that I would never think those thoughts.
The throbbing I felt was so eminent, so there. I felt it in my wrists and I cried as the thoughts of actually hurting myself on purpose came through my brain. I didn’t want to, I hated it. I wanted to get rid of them.
I would sit, contemplating ways to take them away and the only thoughts that came were more places to hurt myself.
I felt throbbing in many different places. I cried more and more and I messaged my friend, I didn’t know what to do.
Eventually, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was still empty but it was the best feeling I had had over the last 24 hours.
No feelings or thoughts, not anger or sadness, no harmful thoughts in anyway, nothing. Complete and utter silence. I had peace.
The same thing happened 2-3 times a week, then it started growing to 4-5 times a week, then to 5-6 and it kept growing until one day - it stopped.
I thought I was free, that I could live life and not be confused about everything. That I could now separate my thoughts from the devil's thoughts.
I was wrong. I was very wrong.
The same thing started happening 2-3 times a week again. Only this time, it was 20 times worse than before. I would leave the room I was in - if there were people - and I would lie on the hard floor, imagining bleeding out. No thoughts were in my head.
I was flat on the floor and I was completely conscious yet I was not in control. I wanted to cry, but nothing would come out. I wanted to scream for help but I couldn’t, all that came out was a breath of air.
My thoughts were organized but they were not my thoughts. It wouldn’t be better to die. I don’t want to find out. I don’t want the pain, bt my brain was telling me I did.
In the very back of my mind, my thoughts were there but I had to search for them. As if they were hidden in a desk in the very back of a pitch black room.
Once I grasped one sane thought, I used every bone and nerve and every inch of determination that I had in me, and I walked to the other room.
Once there, I laid back onto the ground and did the same thing, only this time I was focusing on the conversation that was happening. I focused on every word and the definition. I focused on everything. If someone would talk to me I would simply nod, not having any energy to do much else.
After 30 minutes of listening to conversation, I was able to convince myself to sit on the bed and talk to people.
I was feeling more normal towards the end of the evening.
Of course this happened a few times, and it caused me to almost lose a friendship.
It wasn’t me and it wasn’t them but it was our thoughts that got in the way of a great connection.
Eventually the thoughts stopped and then the anxiety came back.
The balloon being aired up in my head was back and it burst. I thought I would be used to it by now but it never gets better.
The swarm of thoughts flying around in circles, playing tag, is not fun. It’s just as hard - if not harder - each time they come.
I talk to people, a few people, but I hide my emotions a lot.
I blame it on the pain of an injury instead of being honest.
The thoughts that come with anxiety, they tell me lies about the people I love and trust. They make me doubt them. It’s a never ending war between anxiety and sane thoughts.
You’re annoying. No you’re not.
They don’t like you. Yes they do.
You can’t trust them. Yes you can.
On repeat these thoughts circle, adding more and more. My mind being so creative, likes to form stories about these situations. I see little animations arguing with each other about what thought is right and which is wrong.
And even though I do know which though is my own, I can’t catch it. I chase it around and I see it and I know it’s right but then the other thoughts fly by and make me forget what’s right all over again.