Comforting thoughts. And religious stuff.

I'm terrified of the future. Lately, my fears and worries have been taking center stage in my mind. It's been building and building, manifesting into anxiety attacks. Anxiety hasn't been this much of a constant issue since I was 17. I'm afraid of the anxiety itself too; whenever I start to feel it physically, it almost immediately throws me into a panic, doing whatever I can to calm whatever thoughts are worrying me at the moment, thinking, "This worry must be the source. If I stop worrying, I won't have an attack." And of course, fighting it just makes it worse.

It's frantic. It's constant. I don't know what I can do to stop it. I've been praying a lot, but less for the root of the problem to be discovered, so I can deal with it, and more for all these bad feelings to just disappear effortlessly. I know that's not how it works. But I'm scared to just let my thoughts run their course. I'm scared of the conclusions they might lead me to.

At the same time, constantly trying to control every passing thought is exhausting. I'm worn out. I'm looking forward to school, just so I'll have other things to focus on. I keep going to my mom and venting everything to her; but now it's getting to be the same thing over and over. All the worries I keep voicing haven't changed since my winter break began, and within the first few days of worrying obsessively, I felt this peace, like God was letting me know it was okay for me to just relax, enjoy myself, that things would work out in their own time; through that, through my mother's words, through the few rational thoughts of my own, I realized there really was nothing to worry about. In my better moments, I know this.

I know life will just happen, and I can't be so reluctant to face each day just because things might not turn out exactly how I want.

But for all the moments of peace, I keep waking up in a state of panic. I can't brush it off. I keep obsessively reviewing the worries, the fears, over and over in my brain. I can hardly stomach food these days. And when the anxiety isn't as bad, I just feel depressed, a physical pressure on my heart. No matter how much sleep I get, I'm always tired. This morning I didn't want to get out of bed. I had been awake for an hour, and was just lying there, trying to fight off more of the anxiety, and just a general unwillingness to do anything. It went beyond my usual laziness. It scared me. I hadn't been like that in awhile.

And this-this endless cycle of fear and anxiety, this physical aching, this feeling of constant heartbreak . . . in my attempts to control it, it's really controlling me.

So I had this thought earlier this evening, that I just would never get over it; it's just the way I am, how I deal with things. My tendency to over-analyze and over-complicate everything will never go away.

And so it was like, "Okay. I'll leave it at that happy conclusion."

But then, I imagined God slapping me upside the head, like he was saying, "Really, Sara? Are you kidding me?"

And I'm not the type of person to memorize scripture (hell, to memorize anything for that matter). But the verse "With God, all things are possible," popped in my head.

It was the first time I'd really felt it being brought to my attention. For all my worrying, that was a comforting thought.

I know I'll probably continue to worry. But tonight was a tiny step forward. Knowing I can grow from this. That God's got my back. That the seemingly impossible can happen.

And I'm really only posting this here, because all of two people read my blog. If that. Art will be posted next time.

Love,
Pinky L.