Sorry, this is still going.

Sorry, this is still going.

During “episodes”, which is what I like to call periods in which I feel like a sack of hell because it means they will be over one day, I sometimes feel like I’ve forgotten how to do things. It causes me a lot of grief and crying. It finds me sitting in front of my computer for long periods of time, with my mouth hanging open, reading back over things I’ve done before and shouting at it, like “I KNEW IT. I did know how to do this, once!”

It isn’t that I’ve forgotten how. It isn’t that I’ve lost the part of my brain that knows how to have a conversation or kiss my boyfriend’s neck or read a poem. But anxiety is a thief. It is a time thief and a pleasure thief. It comes in to my house–on the weekend, usually–and grabs the things I like and sits on top of them, so I have to hunt for them but always come across this anxiety squatter first. And it looks at me as if to say, I’m just looking after these for you for a little while, so I sit next to anxiety and talk to it instead of trying harder to reclaim those things that are mine.

Being an anxious person out in the open is good and bad. It means that people don’t push me when I’m feeling bad. But it also means that people don’t push me when I’m feeling bad. It means that on Monday morning, I asked my little brother for help and he said yes. But it also means that I could ask my little brother for help, knowing that he would say yes. It means that on Tuesday morning, he helped me again. And that every morning since, he has sent me a text message to ask if I’m okay.

My dad, bless his enormous and generous heart, has been reading about agoraphobia to try to understand it better. “I don’t understand it,” he says, “but I am trying to.” Then he says, “I’m worried that in helping you, I’m not helping you. Or that I’m helping you to rely on my help.” And it’s true. Anxiety is not just a thief, it is also an illusionist. With support, it disappears momentarily and you think it might be gone (not for good, probably, but for a little while).

But the next time it is back like a smug old man, staring you in the face, “You can’t do it.” So you say, “It doesn’t matter if I can’t do it, because someone will support me,” and call fifteen different people and take all the support they have and then suddenly, inexplicably, you are a thief too.