Hi, this is where I’m at Anxiety wise.

This is my first post.

TW: Anxiety, Self Harm, Blood, Sexual Assault, Panic attacks, general mental health issues. Let me know if I need to add any others; not always sure what needs a tag.

Hi, you can call me Quirk and I have anxiety.

(queue the chorused, Hi Quirk)

I’ve had anxiety (and a gift basket of related disorders) for pretty much as long as I can remember. My mom’s also anxious. I think I picked it up from her.

It got notably worse way back in high school. We moved. And that summer before the new house, new school, new people—I got in my first car accident. Not the new experience I was promised by my parents. That night I paced a rift in the living room shaking too badly to speak, racking my nails down my arms till they bled.

So, that’s what anxiety looked like for me.

Panic attacks were easy to identify. I got sent to therapy. They gave me an itemized list. Depersonalization, Disassociation, Paranoia, GAD, Panic Disorder. Agoraphobia. The works. All I knew is that, sometimes? I lost my ***.

But I was a teenager. And so did all the other teenagers.

Then I graduated. Went to college. Had the college experience. Meaning, for me: homecoming royalty. Dean’s list. And then—sexually assault.

And then, suddenly, the shaking wasn’t as manageable. The pacing became running til my legs gave out. It was long sleeves in the summer, and I was falling apart.

So, back to therapy.

I ended up graduating. Getting a job. An apartment with my partner. Once again convinced myself I got my *** back together. Put it all back together, threw it in a bag, shoved it in the back of the closet.

Then, Mother Nature said, “Time for a global pandemic.”

Do you know what you get when an anxious paranoid agoraphobic POC, a global pandemic, and a racially charged riot walk into a bar? This joke is called: my life.

I went back to therapy. Kind of. Aged out of my mother’s health insurance, so things got… sporadic.

My partner and I got two cats for comfort, I got a better job, I scraped my life back together. Mostly. I got a second partner because, for some reason unbeknownst to me, people keep wanting to date me. I work from home. I only panic, occasionally. I only have issues finding reality, sometimes.

Last night wasn’t one of those times.

Last night was also the stupidest reason.

Because I had coffee, just a cup of coffee.

And usually I can handle that jolt of panic that comes with the extra energy. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t handle it.

Felt like the car crash, and unwanted hands under my clothes, and the city burning—all of it, all at once. It felt like I was being torn apart, pulled in a million different directions, but also as I’d dropped in the trash compactor and I couldn’t Han Solo my way out this time.

So, I’m back here, half a decade and some change later, trying to figure out how to handle it. For real this time. For good. Rip it out at the roots. Burn it at the source.

Because I’ve still got decades to live my life. And I don’t want to live it like this.