All of my life I’ve had trouble getting out of the world I’ve created within my head. My overly creative mind seems to take control at times. Some days the product it creates is good and something I can be proud of; other days… I feel stuck.
—
7/4/17 - 6:45 PM
I had just gotten home from spending the holiday with my family. A big change had recently taken place in my life and I didn’t want to spend the night down on myself and in a funk. I went out. I watched the fireworks on the city skyline. I went back home.
9:45 PM
I talked on the phone to a friend. He said something that caught my attention. I stared at the ceiling and it almost felt like something shifted within me.
A photo I took on 7/4/17 as the sun was beginning to set on the river.
“Hey, I’m gonna run. I’ll talk to you later.” I got off the phone.
10:00 PM
My heart began to race. I began to imagine incredible scenarios of dread and panic that felt nothing short of real. I couldn’t stop them from coming. Like a tsunami, my creativity took control and wouldn’t let go.
Sometime between 2 AM & 4 AM
I went to sleep. Not by my own choosing but from exhaustion of not being able to keep myself awake any longer.
Sometime between 5 AM & 6 AM
I woke up from my nightmare and I felt like I was still trapped in one. In an almost dream like state, I went to the same place I had been regularly jogging for the past 3 months. Things felt different in the worse way and I couldn’t convince myself otherwise.
—
The next three days consisted of cycling between panic and dread. This resulted in maybe 8 hours of sleep total. If I went to bed, I’d just continue to have a terror that consisted of horrors I had no idea lived within my brain. Peace would come in fleeting moments but the most innocent phrase or thought would easily send me into an anxiety attack; resulting in me frantically checking on my friends and family or breaking down into an emotional wreck.
—
12/31/2019 - 11:50 PM
It’s New Years Eve.
New Years Eve in Oklahoma City, OK at Bicentennial Park
Although I feel extremely uneasy in large crowds, I know it’s healthy to put myself into low risk and mild level stressful situations. That’s the only way I’ll get better. I’ve convinced myself something is going to go terribly wrong. It could be a mass shooting, a bombing, a robbery, etc… Any horrific thing you can think of, it could and probably will happen. I have to fight with myself from believing that.
I think to myself. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Despite how anxiety inducing it is, I continue to fight. I won’t let my obsessive thoughts win. They won’t beat me. I’m stronger than I could ever imagine and I’ve already grown more than I could ever believe. No matter how hard the thoughts try to convince me, the scary reality that I sometimes find myself believing, doesn’t exist.
It’s all in my head.
—
3/15/2020 - 9:03 PM
I don’t think my hands have ever been this dry. I continue to wash and rewash and wash and rewash and yet that’s still doesn’t seem to be the least of my worries. I know there’s some truth in my fear but I also know it’s not compulsion free 100% of the time.
I find myself overwhelmed and feeling backed into an unwinnable corner in my least favorite parts of my mind.
On one hand, I realize this is a great time to focus on my projects and pour myself into my passions. Those things I’ve been shifting to the back burner for months now. Only occasionally touching on them, here and there, not keeping enough contact to fully complete them. On the other hand, I feel like I can’t go an hour without an obsessive thought creeping into my consciousness. Try as I might, I just can’t get away from it.
The worst part? It feels like all the growth I’ve had over the last 2.5 years has fallen apart and I’ve left it for dead on the side of the road. Some days I feel hopeful. Other days, I feel so stuck.
So where do I go from here? I truly don’t know.
I guess at the end of the day, I just try to survive and lotion my hands a little more along the way.