She was in the next room laughing with her friends. It was a sharp pain. Who actually wants to be jealous of someone’s happiness?
I wanted the world to offer me more than it did. By all accounts my life was good, yet I still felt wretched, alone, jealous and bitter. It frightened me to know I could harbour such darkness. I was petrified of anyone actually seeing the crumbling, directionless mess I was becoming. I tried to hide it, even from myself.
My girlfriend knew what she wanted to do when she finished school, but fog had started to cover any view of my future.
I’d earned the opportunity to pursue the future I’d wanted since I was an 8-year-old boy. But everything had become so black I couldn’t even tell if my eyes were open. I fumbled around trying desperately to find an escape. I couldn’t. …
As I sat alone in the gutter waiting for a taxi, I told myself it was that I just didn’t love her. I’d made the 7-hour trip on public transport just to break-up.
I hadn’t come close to understanding that It wasn’t the relationship that was the problem. To admitting that I was struggling to handle life.
Anxiety was so far into overdrive that I couldn’t settle even for a second. I told myself things would now be better. That the compounding mess was just a side effect of being in a relationship where I wasn’t ‘in love’.
I hadn’t let myself conceive the magnitude of the problem. Nothing changed, It just got worse. I found it harder to see in the never ending night, and harder and harder to feel. I became fearful of relationships, fearful that they would make it worse.
Over years I learnt to handle my issues better and better, but any glimpse of bringing someone else into my world has frightened me. I’m rarely bitter, I’ve slowly crafted some direction amongst the chaos. But, still the panic hovers.
I always wanted to be loving and caring and generous, yet anxiety has often had me trying to simply keep breathing, I’ve felt pathetic and incompetent.
My attempts to slowly ‘filter’ in some connection has meant I’ve made a fool of myself on Facebook and Tinder. I’m a long way from anything I’d imagined for my life. But, there is direction and purpose in learning to manage better.
