Succumb or Fight: Debating My Anxiety

Art by Amber Cottell

What is “being happy”? I constitute it as the satisfaction of when: when I graduate with a high GPA and an SAT score, when I get accepted into the colleges that I actually want to go to, when I pursue a career that I hopefully love and live for, when I can see the proud looks on the faces of the people who have supported me. I see it as the end goal, the brighter light at the end of the tunnel. The beginning, the middle: they don’t matter. And I hold onto that belief with an inflamed passion. 

My attachment to this expectation, however, scares me undoubtedly. What if I’m investing my happiness in something that is never coming? What if I’m wasting my time by working hard and not enjoying little things? What if my fear and wary indecision incite a stunted emotional growth? What if the days that were supposed to be the cumulation of all of the whens’ turn for the worst and all of it was for nothing? Then what’s the point after that? I’ve been dreaming of a cinematic-scale final image scene my whole life. I crave for a moment where I glance back on the choices I’ve made with reverence and look into the vast openness of the life ahead of me in excitement. I deserve that, don’t I? There’s gotta be a moment like that, right? A moment where the weight has been lifted off your shoulders? I’m crossing my fingers that it is possibly the 200-pound weight that I’ve carried my whole life. 

And I think about that every day. It’s less than a voice in my head and more like a daunting reminder that my time to prove myself is almost up and there’s a higher probability that I’ll fuck it up more than ever. I say I’m just prepared; that all the worrying and extra hard work and constant vigilance is because I choose to do it, that I would rather do it. The question is: would I? All my life I’ve overthought everything I’ve done so I don’t even know how to stop and if I would like to. I have spent every second of life worrying, and I can’t find a way to just enjoy the silence. I am constantly stuck with noise in my head. My mom thinks that if I don’t stop now, I’ll go insane later on, but I’m scared of trying and going insane anyway. It’s gonna take a lot of work to battle this issue, and right now, I don’t have time for it. I’d rather blindly accept the way things are than fight for the jurisdiction and power over my own feelings and fears. 

This year I’ve recently become a way better athlete than I’ve ever been. I trained hard. I put in the work every day with running and basketball and dance and swimming. I wasn’t good at it. Some days I felt like quitting or puking, but I didn’t because I knew. I just knew it would amount to something somehow. To me, making these physical changes seems so much easier than making my gigantic mental one. This mentality is something I’ve carried for years and I just don’t know if I can do it, if it will amount to something somehow. 

In the deep, dark depths of fear, however, there is a spark of sincere hope: hope that doesn’t completely eclipse my fear and anxiety but seems to alleviate the sting of stress. I have hope that months and years from now somehow it will be worth all the crying and sadness. All the nights with tears in my eyes and all the unexpected anxiety attacks. I hope it all leads to a fulfilling end game, something that was worth all of it. Preferably, someplace where I’m happy. 

There’s no guarantee in either option I chose; that alone terrifies me. It makes me nauseous and clammy, and I want to abandon the idea completely and act as though it never popped in my head in the first place. Do I choose the weak and risky hope that could possibly save me or learn to live and adjust to the fear and convince myself that this is the path my life was always destined to take? 

Right now, age 15, almost gone through my freshman year in high school, I just don’t have the strength. Maybe hopefully someday I will. I’m praying for that strength to come sooner than later because I’d like to start living my life.