The Patron Saint of Anxiety Fueled Illness

I kinda always think I’m going to throw up. One of the many joys of life with an anxiety disorder. No matter where I am, who I’m trying to impress, or what I’m overthinking, the floor of my stomach needs to jump through my esophagus and do somersaults to the adoringly disgusted audience on the other side. I do however want my guts to stay safely strapped in, with arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Usually, my painfully physical anxiety disorder has different plans.

I remember a lot of times I almost (key word: almost) threw up. Sitting cross legged on a leather couch, sinking into my emotions, I could taste the lingering of the orange, bitter, stinging vomit in my throat. What atrocity could be making my digestive system a living hell? What Herculean task brought my body to the few limits known to man? I had to speak.

I spoke to people who were only a few months older than me as if they had lived lifetimes of pain beyond what I could’ve ever known. Looking at how comfortable they were in themselves, I figured they had to be the real deal of sage wisdom. I almost made myself sick because I threw in every nicety, every bit of good manners, and my very best behavior into a blender of trying to please everyone I had to meet that night.

The person who made me feel like I was going to vomit most was Oliver (fake name, because again, I still don’t know how my coworkers would feel if I admitted that they’ve helped get me through so much). Oliver was a poet. And kinda brilliant. And really sad. So, of course, I had found a new idol. I never hugged him, and I think I should have. If I had, I think he would’ve felt like a soft cotton doll. A voodoo doll without the bad intentions. Any negative action inflicted upon his stitches would’ve only made love pour out into the universe tenfold. Knives in his back were never met with anger. He would pull out the blade, wipe it off, and apologise for getting it dirty. Wrapped in fake pearls and layers of bracelets, the thought shone in my head. The thought that he wasn’t like anyone I was every going to meet. In the shine of his costume jewelry, I saw the glittering promises of improvement.

If Oliver could learn to treat himself with respect, it wasn’t out of the question for me to do it, either. I could learn to respect myself and maybe (gasp) like myself later on. I could do all of this because I was in a position that I didn’t usually have the pleasure of being in. I was just a member. I wasn’t a leader. I wasn’t a peer mentor. I wasn’t idolized. I wasn’t looked up to. I wasn’t a sought after commodity of random information and a resume of youth leadership camps. I was just me. And that.

That was enough.

Because I’ve been diagnosed with Chronic Overachieving Syndrome, and have been living with the illness since before I was doing multiplication tables, I’ve been in strange positions. I haven’t really been a “kid”. Hands tucked into pockets, shoes neatly tied, head held high. Adults always pointed out that I was “mature” for my age. I treated my voice like money- I couldn’t spend too much of it in one place, and I preferred to let others spend on my behalf. I aimed for A’s, because B was a symbol of Be Better. Getting tossed from the arms of the Science Fair, to the clumsy grasp of Theatre, to the hold of Youth Leadership, I was always supposed to Be Better. Being Better meant doing more than anyone else to prove that somehow, in someway, you had grown up first. You were mature for your age, and that meant you could hold your own alongside adults no matter the time, place, or life experience on the line.

Those red bricks told me something I didn’t know. Walking up the concrete steps, with the gentle chorus of crushed leaves beneath me, I can remember grabbing the door knob.

I think, in the little part of me that believes in an afterlife, that some memories are so important that you’re allowed to keep polaroids of them tucked into your mind. Some memories I have are so potent, so saturated in pure adoration, that I feel my fingers run along the plastic sides of a wallet sized photo. I know the glossy finish of time rests gingerly on everything it touches. I remember it, the golden glossiness of remembrance, adorning the moment my life changed.

I walked into that red brick house, and I wasn’t a leader. I wasn’t mature for my age. I wasn’t pressured by the everwatching bird’s eye judgement of others. I was just me. And that was enough.

The problem now, the thing making me rethink the axis of my internal monologue, is the fact that I’m now so comfortable being able to step away from leadership that I’m almost scared (almost petrified, who am I kidding?) to try and take charge in the way that people expect of me. It’s not that my family ever wanted a kid who was in every club, and had such a headstrong personality that they were able to bulldoze through the menial bull of most people. But now? After 18 years of having a kid just like that? Breaking character might just spoil the whole show. My parents never told me they had any expectations for me. They stressed to me that they didn’t expect anything of me, and all of the fear I was internalising was because I expected something from myself.

Isn’t that somehow scarier though?

If my parents didn’t plot a course for me, the only ego, reputation, and dreams I have to wreck are my own.

I’m realising that now, since I am an adult, leadership means something completely different, and that’s not necessarily bad. I don’t need to be making every plan or speaking the loudest to be a leader, and there isn’t even a limit on how many people can really be contributing or leading. I can be leading by making new posts for the social media ahead of schedule, or by making sure someone has posted to the story today. I can be leading by making lists of things to improve upon on the website. I can lead by helping translate slang that comes up in conversation.

The important part is that I don’t have to lead. For the longest time, my resume was bursting at the seams with things that made me look good to colleges. I grew my vines up to the Ivies, and although I couldn’t plant my roots, I could still show off how far I had “grown”. I wasn’t looking to grow to prove to myself that I could. I wasn’t doing it to become better. I was doing it to look like I was that model student that every top tier school would be scouting since the 4th grade. I didn’t want to be that. I didn’t want that at all. But I was meant for greatness, right? I had to do something wild and awe-inspiring. I had to lead this new generation into the beautiful revolution of being better than our parents were. Without that idea, without that Savior Complex™, what would be left of me?

The IFF has taught me that sometimes, the only thing I have to save is myself. So, when I’m overwhelmed with the pain of being alive, and feel the familiar embrace of nausea set in, it’ll be okay if I deal with my issues before trying to take on the horrors of everything else in the world.