Hey, folks. Today’s Daily Prompt is about anxiety. Now that’s a subject I’m all too familiar with. It’s really weird with me, because I don’t panic in the face of direct danger. When one of my neighbor’s houses caught fire a few winters ago, I went into full-on confrontation mode, rallied as many people and extinguishers as we could find, and fought the fire. Granted, the firefighters showed up like three minutes later, but I kind of surprised myself looking back. I was so focused that it took me an hour to realize that I was outside wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts in subfreezing temperature.
Adrenaline is funny like that.
That situation just serves as a contrast to what I’m really anxious about: the future. Not dying, but living. This is my first winter in a dozen years (and in my adult life) that I’m unemployed, and it’s surreal in the worst way. I had to literally ask people what to do, because this is entirely uncharted water for me. There’s this underlying sense of guilt and shame. I don’t want to leave the house, I don’t want to spend anything, I don’t want to be a burden. I try to avoid turning on lights because I don’t want to cause a huge spike in the electric bill. Christmas – what little remnants of the tradition remain in my family – has been canceled. From an objective standpoint, I know I’m doing okay. I’ve been in worse situations. I’ve always been the type to save up and only rarely splurge, so it’s not like I’m going to starve.
And yet.
Late at night, there’s always that sense of dread, those vague little whispers that seep into the cracks of my foundation and try to topple me from the inside out. The fires of doubt and self-contempt burn within and try to consume me. Notions that I’m a failure, that I’ll never get anywhere, that my writing skills are useless, that I’ll be reduced to eating out of cans like I was in college, that my tastes and proclivities make me too unconventional for others, that I’ll never find a well-paying job that makes me happy, that I’ll end up alone and destitute, that the old concept of the American Dream – that family and house – might as well be from another planet. That I’m completely lost. That what little I do have is slipping away from me, just one day at a time…That maybe it’s not worth it after all.
But I will not give up.
Polymathically 