People have been saying that 2020 has been an apocalyptic year. Australian bushfires, COVID-19 pandemic, recession and stock market crash, Black Lives Matter, murder hornets, hurricanes, three of the largest US West Coast fires. Plus, we're hearing more about human rights violations and atrocities around the world (e.g. government responses to BLM, Uyghurs in China, Hong Kong protests and security law).
It's weird that we react like this stuff was only happening this year. Everything happening now is a consequence of everything happening before it.
Thinking about the world and the state that it's in, I can't help but think we were already and always in this situation. Being stuck at home with less to do just means it may be harder to distract ourselves from the world. Some folks are reinvigorated in their actions to promote some kind of change in response to what's happening now. Some people want everything to go back to the way it was before 2020, but doesn't that just mean the events of 2020 would repeat itself? Or maybe no matter what we do now, history will repeat itself anyway; so what's the point?
I think the point is that we at least tried to make things better. Change something, even if it's small, because we know something wasn't working before.
----
The world makes me anxious. The news makes me anxious. My thoughts make me anxious. My anxiety has been manageable.
I'm still talking to my therapist. Thank all of the intelligent thinkers and inventors who paved the way for video conferencing. Thank humanity for developing psychotherapy to help itself.
I won't lie though. Sometimes, therapy makes me anxious too. Like I learn or discover things about myself that I thought I already knew or had already ruled out, and they just hit me harder than I would have expected; and I just feel frozen. How do I face these discoveries? How do I address them? How did I miss them? How did I overlook them? How did I misinterpret them? It's a spiraling path of thought.
At this time, I'm facing my loneliness again. It's something I have acknowledged before and proactively worked at. Learning how to be okay by myself and not seeking others to distract myself from loneliness. But now, it seems I've gone to the far end of passively isolating myself (again). I still talk to my friends through group chats, but that's limited in itself. And when I have difficult moments that I struggle through, I reach out to them. But not always. Do I not trust my friends enough to reach out to them every time I'm struggling? I know I trust my friends. I guess maybe I worry that my friends will get tired of having to help me, even though I know through experience that they will always find a way to help me and to be there to support me. And that's all I ever really ask of them. Maybe internally, I'm hoping for someone to magically take away the erratic thoughts and feelings, even though I know I'm the only one who can make a difference in my actual mind. My friends can only do so much from where they are; they can't go into my head and change anything. So maybe it's not an issue of trust; maybe it's my unrealistic expectations. I know the limits of what my friends can do for me, but I still want more because I'm not sure I can do enough for myself.
I still don't trust myself. I don't believe in my own strength. Or I do believe; it's just not a consistent belief. I forget what I'm capable of. I've brought myself out of dark places. I've risen up from rock bottom multiple times. Even if it felt temporary, I've been capable and strong enough.
A moment of weakness is really a moment of strength because you fight for the next moment. If you can look back on that difficult moment, that means you had the strength to make it to the next moment.
I tell my friends that because I truly believe it for them. I want to believe it for myself.
----
I still have moments where the symptoms of anxiety suddenly appear out of nowhere. But I know they're not out of nowhere. I have to consciously focus on the triggers and acknowledge they just happen; don't let my brain believe in any non sequitur thoughts. Those long moments of random fireworks shooting in September don't mean anything, except people celebrating Labor Day; I'm not in any moment other than that; I'm not having a panic attack during the EDC fireworks. The sudden icy cold feeling on my skin is just my body sweating in reaction to something that I'm not consciously aware of yet; I'm not disappearing from reality. My current experiences of anxiety are just a lot of talking myself down from these intense and irrational what-if's.
I miss being able to listen to music and not worrying about if the music will trigger something. I have to actively choose the difficult music to listen to and walk myself through the music. Last year, I had to stop listening to a lot of my favorite music (Rezz, Kaskade, Sasha Sloan) because they kept triggering weird fears and memories of trips. But I'm back to listening to most of my favorite artists again. I haven't listened to Rezz's EDC 2019 set yet though. That's still the one that I'm unsure of because my panic attack started during that set. But I was able to listen to her Room Service set back in April. I meant to listen to the EDC set soon after, but I kinda have been avoiding it. Need to be brave. Sometimes, listening to a random artist still triggers some fear (reality suddenly feels unreal). My initial reaction is always to turn the music off, but I'm trying to get myself to just sit in the discomfort a bit and remind myself that it's just music. Reality isn't changing; my anxiety is affecting my perception of reality; it is what it is; just let it be.
----
2020 has been a year. Not the worst for myself; 2019 was the terrifying one for me, but 2020 has given me some things to think about. It has amplified the loneliness that I thought I was managing okay. How do I address the loneliness without simply ignoring it or distracting myself from it? I'm still trying to figure that out. My anxiety is better than it was a year ago, but it's still there. I question why it's still there. Why can't I let it go? Why do I feel like I'm holding onto my anxiety?
Maybe I need to go skydiving and face my mortality again haha.
