7. blurred vision
I was recently at a play with my mother. It was a good day, we had a glass of wine with lunch, a nice brisk walk to the theater district and sat down to watch a show on Broadway. The first half of the show, I was taking everything in. The way the characters moved through space so precisely elegant. It felt like the way they interacted with one another was the way life was supposed to be lived. I marveled at the tiniest of details on the costume designs and smiled at the props “mysteriously” entering and exiting the frame. I was breathing in the entire experience of being witness to a performance, fully conscious of what was happening before my eyes.
Then the curtains went down and it was time for intermission. I turned to my mother and we gleamed over the performance, exchanging our praises and opinions. But after a few minutes of this, we ran out of things to say and still had 4 minutes left of intermission. So my mom brought up some things going on back home that she knew would make me worry. She knew because this is how she always lessened her own worries, by splitting the load with me. We have been participating in this one-way off loading for decades. But I’ve only been aware of it the last few years. The first 25 years I just thought something was wrong with me. The overly emotional, death-by-compassion daughter and the emotionally unaware, self-preserving mother, sharing emotions as if they were a decadent platter of hors d’oeuvres. But they weren’t fresh octupus. They were expired milk forced to be drank. It’d be one thing if I could’ve prepared myself for the rotten taste but it was shoved down my throat unexpectedly and unwillingly. I’m afraid if I don’t end this food metaphor abruptly, I may never get to it.
So... after this worry/concern/anxiety dump...
The lights turned on and the curtain raised, the show was back on. But this time I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see the sequins in the dresses, I couldn’t see the strings dragging out the fallen hat. The whole set was blurry. All of my focus went to worrying about what my mother just told me. My brain immediately saw the problem as mine to solve. With no immediate solutions at my disposal, since I was in the middle of watching a play on Broadway, all I could do was keep thinking about what I would do as soon as I got out of the crowded room. Instead of enjoying every minute, I was wondering why the minutes were taking longer to pass than before. My eyes followed the characters across the stage but my mind was falling down the dark well of all the things I’d personally done wrong, for another person to end up in an unfavorable situation in their own lives. And how could I be so happy in the current moment if someone else I loved was suffering in their own.
Now, me 2 years ago would have just stayed in this state of mind for the rest of the play - physically on Broadway, mentally on Anxious Island. But I did too much god damn work this past year to not enjoy the show. So I took a few deep breaths, I reassured myself the problem could be solved later and that if it was not my problem to begin with, it was not my responsibility to end it. Even if I have a pre-determined compulsion to help anyone in a low place climb out of it, I cannot do it at the expense of my own pleasures and soaking in artistic expression is one of my greatest passtimes. So, I put my mother’s concerns to the side and I regained focus on the performance. Finally, a back bone grew on me.
I’ll hold onto this moment not just because the play was phenomenal. Or because I was phenomenal at self-regulating my nervous system (Nicole LePera would be so proud of me). I’ll remember it for those reasons, but I’ll hold onto it because this was the first time I witnessed first-hand how anxiety has effected my life over the years. This is the first time I was ever conscious enough to realize, as it happened, that my anxiety had taken over my vision and that the power to dismantle it was within my reach. I was sitting center stage to all the misplaced curtain drops of my own life, realizing I was both the protagonist and the one holding the rope.
Psychologists say the reason we don’t always have memories of certain events is because it’s the minds attempt at forgetting what the body went through. But I think it is much simpler than that. I think any time our nervous system is activated, whether that be a traumatic event or an emotional response, we cannot see the moment happening in front of us clearly enough to retain the memory of it. It’s like living with 20/40 vision and never owning a pair of glasses.
That’s what living with anxiety feels like, the whole world in front of you is constantly being put out of focus. It’s uncontrollable and at the same time, controlled by you. With nothing to see, only negative thoughts to feel, this is how 70% of your days are filled when you’re an “anxious person” Without sight, just overwhelming, intensely emotional. The body may be present, but the mind is off wandering the endlessly winding streets of abyss, worried and scared for what’s coming around the corner.
Disclaimer: I know this particular example is not exactly a gut-wrenching story of anxiety, I can assure you I have experienced my fair share of tragically inconvenient anxiety attacks in the most public of places but unfortunately those weren’t the times when I was anxious enough to tap out, but conscious enough to tap back in and have this realization of how anxiety affects the mind. So this was the story told.