YOU MUST CHILL (1)
Posted 29 September, 2004 in life shiz, preconceived notions
i don’t know what is causing it, but recently i have been witness to a whole lot of freakouts. some are entirely justified–two close friends recently lost their baby, and it makes me want to cry just thinking about it. i can’t imagine what pain they must be going through. in those instances, i fully respect a person’s right to lose her shit in any way she wishes to. if she wants to freak out in a slow supermarket line and throw frito-lays all over the floor, she gets a free pass. i actually once saw a guy do the frito-lay thing. i hope he was having major drama in his life that justified such a wig-out, otherwise he was just being an impatient asshole.
and that leads me to my main gripe. in the last few months, i have seen all kinds of unnecessary dramatic behavior. a person i know, who shall remain nameless, called the cops on his boyfriend three times, and lied to them. this isn’t the beginning of the drama surrounding some of my acquaintances, either. there have been crackheads, robberies, lies, jail, random homeless dudes… just unnecessary shit perpetrated by selfish people who like to cause trouble because it gets them attention. add to this the minor freakouts i see every day: angry drivers, anxious slow drivers in the fast lane who won’t pull over and cringe in fear when someone honks, couples shouting at each other on the street, frustrated moms telling crying babies to shut up (hello, it’s a baby? it can’t understand?) political debates that always end up getting personal… what is up everyone’s ass lately? it’s not something nice, that’s for sure.
in the words of lloyd dobler: YOU MUST CHILL. there is entirely too much anxiety in the world already without your adding more hand-flapping drama to it. things should not be this overwhelming. sure, sometimes fucked-up shit happens in life. feel free to wig out when those things happen–i know i do. but really, a long line in a supermarket or a broken ATM shouldn’t make you raise your voice to frequencies that could shatter glass. take a deep breath. count to ten. anxiety is poisonous to the body–fun and joke aside, this is true. over time, being constantly worried can cause you physical damage. it’ll weaken your immune system, give you digestive problems, and potentially fuck up your heart, not to mention the crappy sex you will be having, if anyone even wants to do it with your high-strung ass. maybe the long supermarket line is the last straw for you. maybe it’s the rotten cherry on top of your already-fucked-up day. but the people in the supermarket have nothing to do with that. save them the drama, and go scream into your pillow when you get home, instead.
sometimes i think that because my experience with anxiety isn’t a conventional one, i can’t accurately judge whether other people’s panic is justified. i had panic attacks for several years, and then went on an SSRI, which worked so well it was almost scary. (see my natural propensity to make anxiety out of nothing?) my anxiety was never normal. i would worry obsessively about everything. i worried that i would throw up or pass out in public. i worried about how much food i ate, and whether it would make me pass out (too little) or puke (too much). i wouldn’t eat past a certain hour of the day in case i got sick in my sleep, even though that had never happened before. i worried that when i stood on a balcony or a roof, i would suddenly go nuts and jump to my death. i was pretty much a grade-A weirdo.
so i know what’s not normal to worry about. i know it wasn’t normal to feel as if there was always something physically wrong with me. my anxiety made me think of myself as a sick, weak person, and i hid behind my various ailments, when the real thing holding me back was my obsessively worrying mind. “i can’t,” became a big part of my vocabulary. what i really “couldn’t” do was admit how fucked up i was.
and i know it wasn’t normal to think about death all the time, or break out in a cold sweat just at the idea of going to the mall, or panic while i was driving because i felt like i wasn’t compos mentis enough to pilot such a giant hunk of metal, and i might screw it up and get in a wreck.
once on the SSRI, my obsessive thoughts went away. i remember i was a pretty laid-back person before my panic attacks started, and now i am back to feeling mellow again. i now have what i consider to be anxiety within the normal range: for example, i get nervous before i have to speak publicly, as i’m sure most people do. i almost yakked before i walked down the aisle to get married. when i was at my most anxious, i doubt i could have ever walked down the aisle in front of all those people. i would have probably arranged the wedding so i didn’t have to do it, all the while presenting other excuses. anything rather than admit i was afraid. but on my wedding day, even though i totally almost yakked, i was walking down that aisle, god damn it. and the anxiety was actually kind of pleasant, more of an anticipatory adrenaline rush than a clammy-handed freakout.
these days i am relatively calm. i hardly ever raise my voice. i think that’s due to having three older brothers that would imitate me in a high-pitched screech when i got mad: “NEE NEE NEE!” but it’s also because it’s much more ominous to speak quietly when you are angry, especially when you are a girl and people can go NEE NEE NEE. when you talk softly, people have to lean in and really LISTEN to you whispering about how you are going to rip off their head and shit down their neck. but maybe now i am too mellow. maybe the SSRI has taken away too much of my anxiety, and i really should be wigging out about things more than i do.
i don’t think so, though. what i’m seeing out there is tons of unnecessary fear and stress. everybody, please go to your doctor and ask him or her to adjust your medication. there are far too many wobblies being thrown, and it’s stressing me out. and you know that’s bad for me. so stop it.
seriously, though, what is going on? did we all suddenly develop a disorder? it isn’t a fun or a healthy way to live, being paranoid and panicky and angry all the time. i hesitate to recommend pills to anyone–i’m not a doctor, i don’t know what would work for other people, and i’m sure my non-US audience (all 3 of them) already think i am a pill-happy, therapy-lovin’ Yank cheeseball anyway. but shit, a lot of people out there seem to need help. whether it’s zoloft or a swift kick in the ass, they need to go get it, before they give themselves, and me, a coronary.