My name is Emily, and I suffer from anxiety.
Anxiety isn’t “feeling anxious” or “feeling nervous,” though sometimes, it can manifest like that. When I was a kid, I was known for grinding my teeth so hard in my sleep that my dad could hear it from where he was standing in the doorway. I used to regularly erase my physics homework so furiously that I tore holes in the paper. Sometimes, the mere feeling of my own hair on my neck still makes me so angry I nearly cut it off (and usually resort to dunking my head in cold water to stop myself).
But anxiety is more than that. It’s occasionally debilitating.
Sometimes, it means I can’t leave my house, because the second I do, I’m positive I left the coffee pot on, and it’s going to set my house on fire. Most of the time, I can’t even make it past the front door because the idea of worrying about the coffee pot makes me too nervous to even consider putting pants on, much less going outside.
Sometimes, it means that after an entire morning of getting lost in “worst-case-scenario” thinking – usually revolving around becoming slowly certain that most of the people I know and like are faking that they actually like me for a reason that feels very clear to me in an anxious episode and evaporates the moment I come out of it, hungover and exhausted – I message my husband, pretending to be fine, but asking him to call me. He knows what this means, and he usually calls within the hour, and then I cry, about everything and nothing, putting the weight of my own problems on his poor shoulders.
Sometimes, it means that when well-meaning friends message me, even just to say hi, I don’t answer at all. (Usually because I’ve already convinced myself they hate me, but sometimes, too, because to pretend to be OK when you’re so very not OK is more torturous, even, than the original not-being-OK).
Most of the time, at least when it gets really bad, it means that the only thing I feel capable of doing is watching sitcoms on a loop, which makes me feel guilty and lazy and sets the cycle of anxiety rolling again.
There’s much less of a stigma when it comes to anxiety these days, which is a welcome relief. But there is still one problem: my job. I’m my own boss, which means that if I can’t work, I don’t get paid. And the type of work I’ve chosen – journalism and guiding – means that people are constantly relying on me. It’s not like working in an office where, for the most part, if you’re ill, you can stay home and do whatever you needed to do today, tomorrow. I have clients waiting for me every day, and if I don’t turn up, there’s no tour. I have deadlines every day, and if I don’t submit work, I put my relationship with my editor into jeopardy (and also jeopardize any future work).
This, of course, sends my anxiety into overdrive, thus making it nearly impossible to work at all – the universe’s cruel idea of a joke, a self-fulfilling prophecy of nail-biting and hyperventilating and openly weeping over nothing.
Somehow, when it comes to guided tours, I’m always able to take the leap and actually go to work, smile through the anxiety. It’s like I’m acting. It’s like I’m not me.
But when it comes to writing, anxiety can take so much away from me that I don’t have the energy or the brainspace to do what it is I need to do. Which sucks for my book, and sucks even more when I’m on deadline.
I’d love to be able to send an e-mail, in the same way you do when you have food poisoning or the flu:Â Ability to brain on vacation. Will let you know when it has returned.
But I can’t.
Instead, I send an e-mail that feels at once true and false, at once real and a lie:
“I’m under the weather today. I’ll get to this as soon as I can.”
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Anxiety also means I don’t have the energy to do things I usually enjoy, including cook. Luckily, my fridge is perennially stocked with healthy things I can eat in a snap, meaning that anxiety-day lunches often look something like this.
Grated Carrot and Sauerkraut Salad
3 carrots, grated
1 teaspoon mustard
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup sauerkraut
2 tablespoons hemp hearts
salt and pepper
Whisk the mustard, vinegar, and oil together, and toss with the carrots. Mound on a plate next to the sauerkraut, and top with salt, pepper, and hemp hearts.