Anxiety will never define me

There are certain things that make 'me'. How I love cats and can't imagine not having one or two or three in my life. How I read books till midnight and beyond not caring that in the morning I have a busy day. The scent of Nina by Nina Ricci perfume. Piles of books lying in everywhere in my room. The quotes and various pictures on my bedroom door and the 'artworks' of words and pictures from magazines glued onto card surrounding my mirror. How I always wear shoes around the house and even when I am sick get changed out of my pjs. The small collection of all things Little Miss Chatterbox (at least I admit I am one) around my room including the 3 stuffed versions on my bed. The colours pink and green and how they make me relaxed and happy. Psalm 27. The word 'wait' I often write on my wrist in black eyeliner along with Psalm 27 under it. Watermelon body shop lipbalm. How my hair gets natural highlights in summer. Diet Coke. My ipod filled with various Christian singers, Glee and a few random sound tracks from films. How I don't normally wear makeup yet when I'm out I will wear lipgloss and lipstick. How I bake bread when I have had a bad day. How at least once a week I bake up a treat just for the sake of it. Writing. How I always carry a pen and notebook with me.Loving God. Anxiety.

The above are only some of things that make me me yet the last one I find often defines me. I have always been open about my anxiety, to me its something I have to live with even though I don't want it. When I say I have anxiety often people tense up or switch the subject and thats that. I am proud of how far I have come with it and there are times when I need to remind myself of small things I have acheived. Things like graduating high school, winning computing awards, completing my certificate 3 in Business Studies and surviving my year 11 camp are all things I doubted I would complete due to it. If you had met me when I was 12 you would understand how bad I was (and to say it was bad is an understatment).

My extended family is full of high acheivers and I used to get so annoyed when they would brag about what they had acheived, as nothing came easy to me. I am really unco-ordinated and due to that sports were really hard for me (and yes I still stack it at times) and I always had to work that much harder with school work too, whereas my cousins were coming top in whatever they tried their hands at. That probably didn't help much either on the self esteem front. My anxiety didn't just affect certain things it also affected my ability to do exams (I only learnt that this past year though! It would've been so good if I had known that in year 10) I could be getting an average of 70% in english yet come exam time I would just scrape through with 51%. Anxiety has a habit of sneaking itself into areas that you would think wouldn't be affected by it so I am discovering things that I thought were just my personality were in fact due to anxiety.

There are two types of people on this earth the people that dwell on things and the surviours and fighters. I have been told that I am a surviour and fighter I don't sit and dwell on things instead I make sure I am always moving forward. Anxiety is something that I will always have and sometimes moving forward can just be getting out of bed and out of the house and being social, other times its going to job interviews and applying for a few jobs a day.

Anxiety doesn't rule or define me and though it has in the past it doesn't now. Its just something that makes me me like everything else. You can ask me about it and I will answer it, mental illness is getting more common now and my only aim by being so open about it is to make people understand that people with it aren't crazy, just every day people who need a bit more help at times.


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