I don't want to be one of those people who admit to having mental disorders without being checked by health professionals.
But I do have to admit that I am becoming more and more anxious each day, the helplessness of which I do not even know how to explain except that I am now hanging by a thread.
Oh, this actually started much much simpler than it is. I have always been a jittery person. It's part and parcel of being an introvert. I think too much. My brain would automatically go, "Did that thing that I did or say a day ago/a week ago/a month ago/ a year ago/20 years ago something cringy? It was cringy, wasn't it? Oh my God, I am not going to be able to live this down" every night. I called myself a balancist - someone who would always think the worse that could happen whenever everybody is too positive about the outcome. It was an obsession to me, to be the party-pooper, because otherwise the world will not be balanced. I am always tired, I have more vivid nightmares than good dreams (which I kinda enjoy, as weird as it sounds. Having nightmares means that I would wake up and be like, "Oh thank God that's just a dream..." rather than having great dreams and waking up and be like, "Ugh, my real life is shit", so yeah, nightmares woohoo!
But I have lived with it. I have continued to live my life with it and the older I get, the less severe it felt. I became mature enough to learn and let things go, to think that everybody is cringy and everybody must have those embarrassing moments in their lives that they would rather not think about. Which is why nowadays I will read things on the internet until I fall asleep, just so that my mind won't go down that rabbit hole.
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But this week has been the most challenging week of all, because of one person. No, it's not my dad. I know I keep saying that I am stressed out trying to navigate the path that is his health situation and his stubbornness in maintaining the same lifestyle before his kidney went bonkers on him. But dad, that I can still handle.
But this other person... I can't.
Let me give you a situation without explaining who this person is. Say that you are a member of an elite force, who has been following all the rules to ensure the safety of your team. But you have that one member who has screwed up and endangered his life, and decided that "you know what, I am not gonna care about this. If I have to die because of it, I will die because of it"... He is adamant in not changing anything, in not moving forward, in not doing anything at all. He is shutting down. In a different situation, you would go, "Fine, destroy yourself if you must. I don't care". But being a member of your team means that his refusal to budge is endangering everybody else. And he can't be reasoned with, he will snap at the idea of having people try to reason with him (he even snapped at the team leader), and the only solution to not risk the team's safety is on him. You can't kill him or banish him. That's not something you can do for obvious reasons.
And also, because loyalty and obligation demand that you have to stick with him, even if he hates your guts.
So how do you resolve that issue? How do you suppose you can protect your team from a team member who just wants the world to burn? How do you protect a person who doesn't want to protect himself, who hates you, and who has yet to realise that he is the only person who can save himself? You know that you can't solve the problem, but you have to. You just have to. You don't know how, but you have to. And that helplessness is eating you inside.
And to make things worse, you are the team member who will be at the forefront when the attack finally comes because you are there. You are always there. There is no other team that you can hide behind, there is no other war you can distract yourself with, nobody who could shield you from it and tell you that "It's going to be okay", because you are there, because you are the team member whose responsibility it is to tell everybody "It's going to be okay". And every single time you hear a sound behind the enemy line, your heart feels like it's going to burst. You can't sleep. You can't distract yourself with other things. You are slowly being reduced, bit by bit, by the cancerous nature of your anxiety.
And then you have to go out, and smile.
The only positive thing you can get from this is that, "Heck, at least I have no appetite for food, so at least in six to seven months' time, I am going to be thin again."
