A Lovely Weekend Away Featuring Me And My Anxiety

“We’re hanging out Saturday. Want to come out?”

Welcome to my nightmare.

I mean, I was planning on chilling with some Netflix tonight. But instead, I will spend the next 40 minutes angry for no apparent reason, the next 15 composing a polite rejection, another 15 debating whether or not to include a reason for declining, 20 wondering if my reason was good enough, three in sick mode because I sent the text just like that, 20 more berating myself for sending it without a reason, one minute feeling relief when the person replies “cool, see u next time,” and the rest of the night mad at myself for being an antisocial asshole.

You know. Just your regular Friday.

It’s hard to choose time with yourself. It’s even harder when you just don’t like yourself very much. How can you justify choosing a weekend with your anxiety over literally anything else?

Maybe it’s because it’s familiar. I’ve lived with this all my life—in a way, it’s like a hated relative. You don’t particularly like it, but you have had so many memories together, and there were times when they were helpful.

Maybe it’s because it’s safe. To the anxious brain, being on high alert seems like a good idea, less of a chance to be taken off guard. It doesn’t take into account that anxiety is hard to sustain and even harder to manage, which leaves you exhausted all the time.

Maybe it’s because, on some level, it just feels good. Anxiety makes you think you are the centre of the universe, the one who makes the sun rise and set, the one who determines how everything else happens. Anxiety feeds the illusion that you can control every outcome, even when that is not the case.

It’s an attractive, exhausting bedfellow.

It doesn’t give any answers. It gives no comfort. It satisfies nothing but the part of your brain that just likes to pick, pick, pick at things, until there is nothing there but raw flesh and tears.

And so, on we go again, my anxiety and I.

A lovely weekend awaits.