Enough

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to be overcome with anxiety in any given moment, especially to someone who has never experienced it. In the moment, an intense fear overcomes me, paralyzes me, consumes me, and I become somewhat unable to function. It’s like I’m half-awake and dreaming, knowing I’m in a dream but still being unable to wake up, to move my body.

I’ve suffered with anxiety for so long that I’m now able to recognize, for the most part, that what I’m experiencing in the moment is anxiety or a panic attack. On a logical level, I know it. I can identify it and say the words, This is just anxiety. I am safe. This will pass soon. It always does, but I’m having trouble internalizing that and moving forward. I say those words, but I still camp in irrational fear and crippling thoughts. I still don’t move. I’m still dreaming.

Yesterday started off in a panic. After googling the moment’s topic of obsession for almost an hour, alternating between crying and hyperventilating, and asking my husband to console me, I started to recognize that although the fear was real, the reason for the fear was not logical. I was worrying about something that would likely never come to fruition, as is true of most of my fears. I started telling myself, “This is just anxiety,” and that even though in the moment I felt suffocated and restrained with no hope for escape, “It will pass. It always does.“

Although I said the words and half-believed them, I also feared that I would suffer like this, even if it is temporarily and sporadically, for the rest of my life. Able to seemingly get through the day, I was functional, going through the motions and appearing my competent, outspoken self.

Until I found the next thing to worry about. Fully aware of what was happening, I began to obsess about something I did, something for which I already apologized, something I should have been able to let go. But I didn’t. I obsessed, I cried, I worried. I created potential scenarios in my head about what would happen next, how I had just led my life in a downward spiral. How I screwed up. How I am a screw up. Like they said.

I cried for the remainder of the night instead of completing several pressing projects that demanded my attention. I sat, laptop in lap, as tears dampened my cheeks and the rest of my body went limp. At first, I tried to hold back the tears. I subconsciously tried to stop myself from experiencing the emotions that were surfacing. That’s when I started to look for food. I was full from dinner, not hungry in the slightest, but I still stood in front of the refrigerator scanning its contents for something that would comfort me. I removed the container of icing from the top shelf and placed it on the counter so it could soften.

As I resumed my position on the recliner and returned my laptop to its previous position, the tears once again started to surface. This time, I didn’t try to stop them. This time, I let them flow freely and allowed myself to feel the pain and sorrow that accompanied them. I thought of the icing on the counter and the naked cupcake on the table that awaited the creamy, sweet topping and decided to wait for the fit to pass before returning to it.

And then it hit me. Hard. “I’m not hungry, but I’m looking for something sweet to stuff these uncomfortable feelings I am feeling. I feel so full that I don’t think I could even eat anything, yet I’m planning to devour that cupcake, maybe two, to ease this pain.”

My husband looked at me and uttered, “Then don’t do it.”

And with those words and that realization, I never returned to ice the cupcake.

I allowed myself to feel, to release, to hurt, and in essence what I did was allow myself to heal.

This morning, although I’m not currently in a state of panic, I’m still feeling vulnerable, like anything can set me off and return me to a moment of irrational fear, obsession, and worry. And when I was faced with a seemingly minor incident, the feelings started to swell within me and the tears resurfaced in my eyes to revisit my still-reddened and puffy cheeks. I realized, in that moment, that the feeling I felt as a result of that incident was the same feeling I felt yesterday even though the catalysts were different. It’s not the situation or the triggering event that creates the panic. It’s the feeling it invokes.

As I long for last night’s deserted cupcake and icing to mask the feelings of inadequacy, instead of giving in to that inner voice trying to convince me that I will never be good enough, I remind myself:

I am worthy.

I have value.

I deserve to be loved.

I am enough.

And for today, that has to be enough.