Anxious adventure trail.

Intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations. Fast heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, and feeling tired may occur.

That’s what the wwweb says anxiety is. It’s normal to feel this occasionally they say, but when it is obsessive and all consuming it then become a disorder. Can it resolve itself? Be cured? Not just treated? I rarely feel tired as it suggests. I am the most tired after being around too many bodies. People are full of various energies they don’t understand. I somehow seem to pull it all from them as if I’ve stepped right into them and feel what ever they are feeling.

Say you have a speech, you are anxious about it, then it’s over and that anxiousness goes away. But what if it doesn’t? I have replayed the anxious feeling of things from years ago. My brain doesn’t seem to want to file them away. I’m like an unorganized index. All the drawers are open and files are all over the place. Some are upside down, some go in and fly back out. No one showed me how to file my things?

I’m sure we can all pull a memory of a time we were anxious. But I don’t pull the memory, I pull the feeling. When a current event comes I should be nervous about I pull up the most active feeling of when I was in a similar situation. Sometimes not even similar.

I was so nervous speaking in front of hundreds of people when I was in the junior miss pageant. I’m not even sure why or who or how I ever did this. What made me want to be a queen?

I was made fun of because of my smile, my big cheesy smile because of my jaw and teeth not being aligned right. I was made fun of for this little glow that was on top my white blond head when I was little that looked like a halo. I was made fun of for pulling my socks up to hide that my legs that were way too long for a little girl.

My grandpa used to call me an angel because of this halo my blond hair gave off. Others said it looked like I colored my hair or got into bleach, both believable had I not been ten. I don’t know what I saw or believed. Who was right?

I think of the flushed cheeks and hives creeping up my neck when I speak. The way my stomach talks. The sweating, the vomiting. Fast heart rate. Choked breathing like I’m stuck in a turtle neck made of plastic wrap. These are my nerves talking. They are active loud talkers. I specifically pull the times my nerves were too loud and think of it. I can’t think of the actual speech of the moment. Every time I recall it it gets more vivid, more clear as if it happened instead of what I’m about to do.

What would I think of right before giving a speech if this was gone? Nothing? Not possible. Would I say over and over to breath and stay calm? Would it work? Can I talk over theses loud noisy nerves? Would I fuss over something like a dry plant I noticed and distract myself enough that I didn’t have time to panic. Or would I miss the speech from being distracted? No time to feel that creeping crawling choking panic can’t give a speech must tend to plants. Aren’t I self soothing by having these vivid loud arguments between nervous and calm. Enough to be able to convince myself to do it? I must be loud enough.

What do people think of when they aren’t panicking? Does everyone panic? Are just some able to say so and show it? I used to think my biggest fear was that no one thought like I did? Second biggest was that everyone did? Now I think? Now they are replaced by I am afraid of who I am when not afraid.

Are the calmest people really frauds? Or in control? Loud enough to shut themselves up? Should I not be proud of my blushing and embarrassment, show that I’m afraid but I’m not afraid enough to not do it. Show my stubborn jaw is set with determination even if my teeth are grinding when I talk not just as a sleeper, my legs are long but strong, my blond halo is my grandpa looking down on me. Saying you got this. All of this. Or is it just me?

I think it helps to just recognize that I am anxious. To be able to tell the difference between a simple Im nervous or a more difficult one for me is Im afraid. They are not anxious. Anxious is my body responding to the thoughts that consume me, not a specific definition of me.

When I am nervous I can feel it. I am a little antsy, more chatty sometimes and sometimes very quiet and focused. I don’t sweat I become almost hyper focused on what I’m doing to keep me from getting anxious really. I don’t like it when things are loud or phones ring or I have to listen.

Afraid. I’m still working through this. Afraid for me is doing things. All things I am afraid of. Very few things I do with no fear. In fact I can’t think of something that I am not fearful of. I am afraid of falling in love, I’m afraid I will love scuba diving, I’m afraid of jumping in the deep end, I’m afraid to say no, afraid to feel, to not feel, afraid said so many times sounds like I’m frayed! Like I’m unraveling at a seem. I still do the things I’m afraid of. Some more than others. Some I haven’t. Some I am too afraid still. Some I will never. Fear doesn’t stop me. It motivates me.

Anxious is when these things become too much. Or if there are too many at once. Or too many to process. Or processing isn’t working. Or a phone does ring, or someone tries to tell me to listen. Anxious sometimes happens sitting totally still and working and all of a sudden my heart tries to fly out of me. It is overwhelmed. I catch this now and make myself think about what could have possibly made my heart need out? It’s usually that I am not listening to myself. If I take focus off of me and onto someone else my mind tries to consume me like a disease while I’m not paying attention. I remove myself and sit.

It’s easy to say just change your thoughts. In fact I can do it. But all day and night I’m changing my thoughts like seconds in between Im telling myself what to do. That’s why I can’t listen to others. I have to listen to myself.

I know I’m starting to get anxious when math sounds fun. Or when I say things like math is always right, math makes sense, math is great, I love math!! This is when I’m not listening. I’m busy doing math. I am too much so I just do math. Nothing hard like long division or solving some equations that solve the world, no algebra, no physics. I’m not a math genius, my math knowledge is about a junior high student who quit listening when they added letters to numbers. So sixth grade math. Just some basic adding up license plates or making the numbers on the clock equal a certain number. I will sometimes do my budget in my head. Running numbers like a cash register.

Occasionally they dance, these numbers. Math is actually kind of too loud and boring. So I make them wiggle around and dance or sing. I’m like a kindergarten math class poster. My numbers have faces with smiles and blinky eyes. It’s just more entertaining.

I’m rarely listening to others. I am busy. I don’t even listen to the lady programmed to give directions in my car. I frustrate her. She is always rerouting me and confusing me.

I am often given instruction to places and hear half to none of them. How to fold a camping stove? I have returned to the store twice to be shown. How to operate a backhoe? I will just need to try it and be shown again? How to tie a shoe? I can only imagine how hard it was to teach me to tie a shoe. To this day I still think it’s wrong. I change the way I tie my shoes like some change their socks. Daily. I just think there has to be a more secure way to keep a shoe on. People do lose shoes. I don’t know how but there is often just a single shoe somewhere. Did they walk right out of it? How can you lose just the one? Was it not tied at all?

Im always worried the world is full of people who don’t listen. Leaving me to wonder who else isn’t getting places I’ve told them to go? Should I have drawn a map? Are there lost people because I didn’t know to use my hands more to direct them? Explain further with a little visual aide?

I need to get back to my routine. This is all going to be ok. I found one single positive outlook from someone and will hang onto it for dear life. Its a choice to make. I can follow the rules. I can also keep living my life at the same time. It’s just a basic change in the path. I was on one and then it had to change. I had to turn off a path that isn’t charted yet. This will require a map. It may not even have one made in your head yet.

Once a trail I was on was closed. I even asked if it had any closures. The guy said we don’t but the other entity might. He told me a story about bats and the rules and I didn’t quite listen. This land changed hands somewhere in the middle of the trail. The other entity didn’t know of a trail closure but said the other one might. No one seemed to know who did what in this place. But the bats were safe.

I was about half way through and it was just gone. They were removing dead Ash trees at a time of year not to disrupt bats. I found this thought comforting enough not to panic. I was going to have to navigate the woods to find the trail through about 11 miles of my trail missing. Piece of cake. I found water in the map. And followed it. It reconnected me to the other side of my loop. I had my map but once I found my little creek I didn’t seem to need it. It was one of my most adventurous trails I ever went on. Funny because it’s called the adventure trail.

This is just my new anxious adventure trail. I have navigated these things before. Easy-peasy.

I’ve been anxious all last week. I slept weirder than usual. I didn’t do anything I should have. I left routines behind because they are telling us what to do right now. How to feel. To be afraid. I am afraid, just not of myself.