Loop of thoughts

If there is anything good about having anxiety, it would be the sense of understanding and sympathy it makes you have towards others.

The “take all the time you need” you say to somebody you feel panicking about fetching you something. The “you don’t have to talk or reply or come up with an answer to my messages because I know there isn’t any” when you text somebody complaining a minor inconvenience. The reassurance you give to people who have it worse than you, because you know how important it is to be gentle and caring.

As much as anxiety gives you the ability to understand others, bound with them and share a common emotional world and experience the intersubjectivity concept, it vexes you that it gives you thoughts you have to live with for a long time if not for the rest of your life, it tires you constantly and drains you. It never lets you enjoy the beauty of silence because you always have to put on a podcast or a series to not hear yourself talk.

You thought that when you were asleep, you were at last away from the physical world problems, until you realise that sleep was no better, even then you had no rest because of your repetitive night waking, your sleep paralysis, random ideas popping into your head the minute you open your eyes even in the middle of the night, your brain continuing the work you have left right before your eyes closed, teeth grinding, etc.

As much as you enjoy being your self’s best friend, you find yourself drained after spending a day with just yourself, it is exhausting and energy consuming on a different level. The constant judging you put yourself through, the unnecessary corrections you have to give yourself and the ubiquitous omnipresent idea that life is a series of regret and guilt haunts the shadows of everything you are about to do although when you think about your life and look back at it, you are convinced that you are a happy person overall and you do manage to keep a decently happy existence.

Regret and guilt:

Everyone moves on but you still can’t, you still obsess over those little to big mistakes you have made and you regret them in awfully terrible way that it physically hurts. But that’s normal; everyone goes through a similar phase. But why does it seem like, for you, it is no longer a phase, but a perpetual reality you have to live quite frequently.

You think about how between being big and being happy what choice must one take to actually feel happy? What should you be after your twenties? Is prioritizing your personal life as important as anything else even when it feels like you shouldn’t? Should you be everything you said you wanted to be back when you were younger? Is it okay if you end up completely different than what you thought you wanted to be a long time ago?

You never understand why you feel like you are not worthy of anything good in life, you always have to question everything, doubt everything and obsess over the little things that make you say that this is a sign for you to quit. You are always hard on yourself that when a situation that requires for you to be a little tough you just crumble and blow it.

You feel guilty because you are not the biggest fan of your grandma’s Msemen although she makes it specifically for you, and you ask yourself if it would have been better to tell her the truth or is her happy face when you eat it and pretend to like it is worth the effort she puts making it from scratch.

Lying isn’t always bad, sometimes it gives another person purpose, something to live for, a spark of joy.

You feel guilty for the time you were 7 years old and refused to go to the grocery store for your grandpa so he decided to do it himself and the moment you saw him go get his sneakers lives rent free in your head and although you felt bad and ended up going anyway, you just cannot forgive yourself for it.

You feel guilty for the women in your family who didn’t get to go to school and college, who never got to live the satisfaction of achieving something for their own because they were told that taking care of a household and raising kids was a bigger achievement, the biggest achievement of all and everything they desired to do and be, leaving them with a never filled whole, a never satisfied self and for a reason may be not themselves know or recognise.

You feel guilty because they look up to you as if you were smarter. As if you were better than them, as if they were less than you and it crushes you because they will never know that the person you have most aspired to be is them.

You feel guilty for the people in your family who have never experienced the pleasance of having a friend you can call in the middle of the night, a friend with whom you genuinely have fun, without the worries of being judged, who understands your anxiety, your introvert moments, your asocial phases and your silly jokes. A friend you glow with, walk with looking for a bathroom at 4 am during a nightshift while making silly tiktoks. A friend you can confide in.

You feel bad for those people who never got to live a slow love, peaceful love, a touch of care, a voice you know will always be calm when it addresses you, a voice so calming you know it will always shut down your worries and insecurities, a voice you know will never hurt you with words when it speaks to you. To never know what it is to be respected even in moments of anger, someone who doesn’t see what you have built together so cheap that they shatter it in a moment of rage, not blinded by madness.

To never know what it feels like to be taken care of when you are sick, somebody who wouldn’t get frustrated with you because you are ill. To never know what it is to be taken care of even when you are completely healthy, just because your significant other finds joy in doing so.

You feel bad because people you know on a personal level decided or were obliged to settle down for less, and so they will never know what it feels like to be someone’s favourite person in the whole world and to have someone who is never too tired to take care of you, never too scared to make you feel protected, never too cold to not offer their jacket to you.

To never know a person who would wipe with a gentle touch the worries and fears out of your skin, who would delicately trace colourful dreams on your skin. To have your scars loved, to have them be the reason somebody once fell in love with you and have that somebody draw stars around your scars without letting them bleed. (in reference to Taylor Swift’s Cardigan: You drew stars around my scars and now I’m bleeding)

You feel sad because those people will never know the beauty of patience, the soft and reassuring look on the face of someone you love, looking at you with patience. Patience must be the elite form and ultimate way of showing love and care.  You feel sad because those people will never have someone who will button up their complicated jacket and promise to unbutton it once your destination is reached because you are lazy and they are scared you would catch a cold.

You feel sad because they will never know what it feels like to be celebrated, to be proud of, to be called beautiful, to have your hand held warmly in your lover’s pocket, to be looked at in a room full of people and thought of as the world. To have someone who is happy to love you and is never counting your mistakes. Someone who is always afraid to lose you, they never take you for granted and keep the same effort they once put to get you at the first place.

You feel sad because they will never know what Joe Pera meant when he said: "When Stephen Hawking cheated on his wife, she must have felt pretty sad. It is a terrible thing to do and i don't wanna defend him but try thinking about it from his perspective for a moment. He spends the whole day thinking about the universe and how big it is, how our star, the sun, is just one of dozens of stars in the galaxy, which just one of dozens of galaxies in the known universe. If one guy cheats on his wife, what's the big deal?

Thinking further down the same thought, if we're so tiny and insignificant, if we can find one person in the entire universe who cares about you, why would you wanna disappoint them".

But then you wonder, is it better to live this kind of sentiment, or is it just not as bad as it seems to be; for you to be just like the rest of the people you feel bad, sad and guilty for; because the wound of losing such a thing never heals and the scar it leaves in your heart is a mark reminding you of memories kept and future realities lost that never hurt less every time you visit the shadows of a close yet far past, every time you refer to that person using “was” instead of “is”, leaving you with a never ending pain, never ending void, a never ending sorrow and regret for the things you could have done to keep it.

You ask yourself how is it possible to move on and then, you feel bad for yourself, no longer for the people around you, because you know that they will never have to move on from something they never lived while you know you can never move on from this thing you have lived.

In moments like these, you remember how when you were a kid, it was never your first dream to be a doctor, or a writer, or an astrophysicist. You just wanted to be a little jewellery inside of a little box, a little hidden rock in a park, an unused knife in the kitchen, an unnoticed vase in a living room, with enough life to notice what is around you and observe but never with enough life to live the difficulties of existence.