Thahabu

I completely failed at my version of self-care last week. I was having crying fits and anxiety attacks all through the night and was frustrated with not being able to sleep. I had a 10:35 class in the morning, which I am always late for, so at 6:30 AM, I accepted that there was no way I was going to fall asleep. I planned to used the extra three hours to shower, wash my hair, do yoga, and catch up on homework. That will definitely put my mind at ease, I thought to myself. I was so motivated, I got up ran to my hair care basket, and saw that I left my combs at home, How could I be so stupid? I had another self-hate episode on how I’m the stupidest person on earth who can’t function as a productive human being. I can’t even remember to bring hair essentials back to school after spring break? My lip trembled with disappointment.

After giving myself a mental beating, I opted to detangle my hair with my fingers while I washed and conditioned it. I didn’t wanna give up. I had a fantasy of being able to tell myself that I was productive before noon for the first time in months. By the time I was done in the shower I decided I was still way too tired from not sleeping, so I hopped back in bed, and set an alarm for 9:30 AM, leaving me enough time to do yoga and study. Only problem was I slept through the alarm and I woke up at 10:25 AM, making me late for class again. I was irate and anxious, and telling myself I was worthless and wasn’t gonna amount to anything if I can’t even wake up on time. It was the end of the world, I felt like a failure. I got lucky and arrived just two minutes late. My professor had also just walked in, and marked me present.

Class wasn’t too hard. When it finished, I approached my professor to discuss areas I needed to work on. I had been doing better than I thought I would on tests, yet I struggled with the homework. She told me it was fine, and that I could come to her for extra help whenever. This was the opposite of how I thought she’d react. For months I dreaded asking her about extra help, thinking it would result in her being angry with me. This prompted me to take a look at how my anxiety affects my everyday activities, it keeps me from being able to rationalize between a life a or death situation and me just being forgetful or a bit scattered like every other person. In reality it was fine, and she was truly understanding.

My anxiety keeps me up at night and tells me not to leave bed in the morning. It’s a miniscule, mind-crippling monster made from pencil scribblings, with wild hair and yellow eyes, that screams inside me—from the very bottom of my body so by the time it reaches my brain it is just a whisper—telling me that my life is still a despicable mess and I’ll never amount to anything, so I should just lay down and pretend to be dead, because I’ll probably just screw it up even more by trying to accomplish anything.

Describing it now, I can’t believe that I walk around with this ghastly, horrifying feeling. I saw anxiety as a flaw that inconvenienced everyone else but me, not something I should look at and take care of with kindness and care. Whenever I got angsty or overwhelmed growing up, my family would just get annoyed and tell me to calm down. It wasn’t a mental illness to the adults around me, just Thahabu “being extra and overthinking everything.” I talked to my therapist about the episode I had, and she pointed out that I always go to the worst-case scenario, and that I’m way too hard on myself. “Instead of saying you’re stupid, try saying you’re sad, because that’s what’s really going on,” she said. She was right, I don’t give myself the time or space to be sad, and replacing “stupid” and “incompetent” with “wow, I’m going through a lot, of course I’m worried and sad,” did make me feel like less of a problem.

I am slowly accepting that my anxiety is real. Although I had a terrible time trying to make myself feel better that morning, I still set a goal of waking up at 9 AM every day to do yoga and other activities that make me feel good. I love the feeling of being up while everyone else is asleep. Using the time to read is the best; because sometimes depression can make you lose interest in the things that you once loved. I haven’t been able to finish a book in a year but this weekend I got lost in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

I haven’t quite stuck to the 9 AM rule yet, but maybe it’s not supposed to happen all at once. Maybe it is waking up before 12 PM, and knowing that I’m making the effort to get up and make myself happy. That’s progress. I’m building the desire to do things, and reminding myself that these things do make me happy. I’m having to reconstruct myself: put all of the shattered parts of me back together and get to know them again. It feels so good to indulge in things that I thought had dried up and fallen off me like leaves from a tree in Fall. I know that spring is around the corner and the leaves always grow back. ♦