Anxiety sucks. Depression sucks. There’s really no way around that. No way to spin it. “bUt AnXieTy iS jUsT TRyinG tO kEep yOu aLiVe” shut up, stop it, it definitely is not. I’ve gotten treatment, seen a therapist to help my mental health issues, so I feel a lot better now than before all that. But even still, there are times where my anxiety and depression just come back full swing. Sometimes something happens: a fight with a friend, parents getting divorced, etc. But other times? It all just happens without reason. I will be sitting in my dorm having a pleasant day, when all of a sudden I am just hit with a wave of “nothing matters, why do anything at all”, which will usually define how I feel for the next week or two or three. Sometimes I will be laying in my bed after having a very nice day, when suddenly my mind decides to remind me that I will die someday, that I will die tomorrow, that I will die in ten minutes. I can’t argue because if I end up thinking about it for too long I give myself a panic attack, so I just lie there trying to think of anything else. I’ve gotten to the point where I can manage this anxiety fairly well. I can distract myself, or do exercises to calm myself down. I wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish I could just be myself. Why me?

It is infuriating that I just spiral so easily. That I can be so fucking happy one minute, and in the next I can hardly breathe. That I cannot just go through my day unbothered anymore and enjoy myself. Before I developed anxiety everything was so peaceful. I need not worry about death, about what others are thinking of me at every second of every day. I used to have hope that I could “conquer” my anxiety. I do not have that hope anymore. I know now that I just need to live with it. To co-exist and to just deal. I can’t help but feel jealous of those who do not have to deal with what I do. Something close to 40% of adults suffer from anxiety or depression, so I am certainly part of a community. But that means that around 60% of adults just do not have symptoms of anxiety and depression? That absolutely blows my mind. I’ve talked with friends about what I have gone through and they cannot relate at all. I am jealous of their… innocence I guess. I cannot even fathom not feeling the way I do, and I feel like a great injustice has been put on me. Why me?

The only positive thing that I can get out of all of this is that I am better than I used to be. That I am in a better space now, and I can manage my feeling much more effectively than before, including feelings other than anxiety and depression. And yet I still can’t help but ask the question: why me?

Why do we define such a thing as “normal” behavior? No one is normal, everyone is unique, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, quirks and faults, likes and dislikes, and so no one is really “normal”, everyone is “abnormal”. So why do we define some people as more abnormal than others? Where do we draw that line between what is the norm and not? What about this person has offended you so much that you need to stick a label on them and say they should act more normal?

I think it should be a goal of society to get to a point where we just are accepting of peoples individual needs without judgement and without setting certain people apart from others. For instance, I would not question someone wearing headphones on their way to class any more than I would someone who was stimming while on their way. Everyone has their own needs, no matter a diagnosis. If someone in our class needed the windows to be unshaded, or the noise level to be low, we would happily conform to allow that. However in some circumstances, such as a business setting or a less relaxed class, people may be less inclined to provide these accommodations.

This is not to say that I do not support the diagnosing of mental illness or neurodivergency, I am simply saying that we shouldn’t treat diagnosed people any differently than people without diagnosis. Everyone has needs and it is up to us whether we accommodate for those needs and to what degree. As a society we can decide to accommodate the best we can, and just as importantly we can not isolate people with greater needs than others and not oust them from society.

Why do we kill our bodies and minds working so hard? Why do we spend almost our entire lives sitting at a desk away from friends and family. Why do we choose to be unhappy doing labor that we often do not want to do, that puts money in the pockets of people who will not have to work a day in their life. The answer seems pretty simple: money. We need money to survive. To eat. To be happy. To do things with and for our friends and family. To give our children a good life. To get a good education. To be able to receive medical care. To have a roof over our heads. To live. Whoever said that money doesn’t make you happy was just straight up wrong, because in the system that has been put in place, you do need money to be happy. Because without it you often cannot live as happy a life. You may be sick and cant afford medical care. You could be in need of therapy or psychiatric treatment, but if you cannot afford it, it will be difficult to get that care. It could also be simple things; being unable to treat yourself to some good food after a long days work; having a day to yourself without needing to go to work; or having that car you’ve wanted since you were a kid (or even a car at all). This is not to say that one cannot be happy without money, but money sure does help.

The system that we have now is not a good one. I do not have a different plan in place, but I sure know that what we are doing now is not nearly close to perfect. It is extremely depressing to know that you have to work like 40 years just to be able to retire and enjoy the last 10-20 of them. The most interesting concept that was in one of the readings was Emotional Labor. Coming off of a shift feeling tired and drained and shitty, knowing tomorrow you have to do it all again is one of the worst feelings. It takes a large mental toll to keep a happy face on for 6 hours while eating very little and being on your feet the whole time. I would often come home and not even talk to my family because of how drained I felt. I would just quickly eat some food, go up to my room, and collapse on my bed. Expecting someone to do that for so many years while dealing with the other stressors of life is just cruel. And the only alternative being starvation? That does not sound like a system I want to participate in. It’s also just taxing on your body in general. I have not been in the workforce long, but I already have had some effects from working long hours. When I used to work as a cashier I would come home exhausted, my back and feet hurting, and my eyes strained from looking at the monitor all day. Sometimes these feelings would go away during the night, but other times they persisted. Doing something like that for years is unthinkable. I would not be able to keep doing that, I would go insane.

In my day-to-day life, I am constantly aware of how I interact with the world around me and how I am being perceived. I want to be masculine, but I also want to be approachable and friendly. I try to be funny but I don’t want it to come off like I’m trying to “woo” someone and make them uncomfortable, I just want to be likeable. I want to wear nice clothing but also feel comfortable in the clothing. I feel pressured to be fit and to look strong.

I constantly am worrying over how people view me. “Am I being weird?”, “Am I making people uncomfortable by just existing in this room?” I just don’t interact with people who I don’t know anymore because of these anxious thoughts. I make myself unnoticeable and try not to attract attention. Even now, I don’t actually know if I make people uncomfortable. I’ll be sitting in class and all it takes is for me to make eye contact with someone for me to start thinking, “Oh no, they thought I was staring at them don’t they.” And thus begins the anxious spiral. Maybe these feelings are true: that people do think I am weird and I am making them uncomfortable. I am pretty sure its just anxiety.

Through much of high school I was never athletic. I was not sporty or fit, I played video games and I went to school and those where my two activities. I played tennis in my first year, and I was pretty good, but even still I did not look it. I was on the heavier side, I had acne, I had a terrible haircut. I didn’t feel very self-conscious for a while, but eventually that’s all I really thought about. When the pandemic happened, I decided that I hated how I looked. I started going on my families elliptical every day in between some of my classes, I started working out with my brother and my day every other day, and I would do leg and ab workouts every night before bed. It got to the point where I was exercising so that I could eat. I would have to earn the food, I couldn’t just eat it.

Nowadays I feel like I look pretty healthy. I (usually) eat right, and I stop myself from working out just to eat. But even though I’ve lost weight and gained muscle, I still pick at my shirt where I used to be bigger. I still cannot wear tight-fitting shirts, or even shirts with tighter fitting sleeves. I still love the colder months when I can put on a hoodie and forget about how I look.

In the reading about the definition of phenomenology we learned how it is the study of experiences from various first-person point-of-views. Regardless of how other people will see me, my experience in this world will always have me perceiving myself as less. In a similar way as we had talked about in class, where a women will be destined by society to feel out of place and always conscious of where they fit into, I am as well. I will constantly be wondering if I am doing the right thing, wondering how people see me, all the while viewing myself in a negative light. Life goes on and one day we may not have these standards. Until then I just remind myself that it does not matter much what others think of me, and that I should be happy that I’ve gotten to a healthier place than I was.