Anxiety has a mouth but it doesn’t give voice to anything; It consumes, utterly and completely, if left unchecked.

And these days, the anxiety I experience sometimes feels wildly unchecked! And in those times, I feel consumed by it.

Excitement tainted with disappointment, becoming anxiety.

When I was a kid, I would get so excited about an upcoming event that I would literally become ill. Like full blown fever, sick. Which would prevent me from participating in whatever event it was I was SO looking forward to. This is one of the ways that excitement became tainted with disappointment for me.

This is how I learned calculated optimism. And through unfulfilled promises and lack of support for my passions, that calculated optimism became disappointment. Eventually when faced with anything that I am even mildly excited about doing, I encounter a wall of anxiety that I must overcome in order to move forward.

This wall of anxiety started manifesting as my propensity for “hoping for the best, but planning for the worst” And now is me just expecting the worst.

I’m only realizing most of this as I’m writing it, far too late to spare my daughter from it, but maybe still early enough to help her dodge the full brunt of it.

But dodging it or avoiding it isn’t really the point. In reality, learning to deal with it in a healthy way is the point, and should be the goal. So at the very least she is able to witness me dealing with it and coming out the other side to face whatever it is that I’m experiencing anxiety over.

This train-wreck of a thought came about while explaining to a co-worker what I’m doing here on Substack and how I’m plagued by this sense of not belonging, or imposter syndrome. (Hi Emily)

I explained that I don’t see myself as a writer, in the sense that writing has never been a part of my education or my profession. But yet here I am doing the very thing that by the very basic definition, would make me what I feel I am not. I might not be a polished writer, but I have a lot of ideas to share. And the more I write, the better my writing will become.

I feel like I’m encountering topics at a break neck pace, and know that sustaining that kind of output long term is not reasonable. But I’ll continue to write about the unique conglomeration of topics that my brain steeps in for as long as I am inspired to do so. And even if no one finds value in what I’m doing, it has value to me, even if its just to try to make sense of my own experiences.

And maybe, just maybe, writing will be just the therapeutic tool I need to help unpack the anxiety easier.

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