I guess not everybody understands what it’s like to be raised by parents with anxiety. It’s like walking on soft petals with land mines underneath it, that you’re always afraid of stepping on accidentally, and blowing it all up. You fear destroying the peace, the calm and the silence of life. You fear failing, yourself and others around you. You fear your feelings, even those that make you feel alive. You fear just anything and everything. You fear life itself. And even though you want to stop feeling this fear and feel something else for once, you cannot. The only other feeling familiar to you is pain. Everything seem to hurt your delicate heart. Your fear plays with your imagination and makes you witness scenarios that may never happen in real life. It takes you to places, dry and deserted and that makes you feel lonely. That makes you believe you’re alone in this world with nothing else but your mind to hold on to, which continues to rule and crush your heart in the churning waves of imagination.
It’s not like you’ve been feeling the same fear since the very start, but like you’ve experienced it growing within you, slowly, like a bairn inside the womb. It grows and flourishes until it becomes a part of you, inseparable and intact. It is slowly transferred into your soul and your heart stops beating in the same upbeat rhythm that it always has. You feel the shackles slowly forming around your heart. This fear, it doesn’t come natural, but it has been fed to you till you no longer remember the taste of love and joy or thrill and adventure. It’s like a legacy being transferred to you by your parents. And that is the worst form of legacy.Yet somehow you make way to welcome it into your life. You simply struggle every step of the way until you learn to live with it. You borrow calm, patience and quiet to keep your ever buzzing mind sane. I guess that is why you need validation and assurances. And you hold on very strongly to those who give you that. So strongly, you don’t realise you’re hurting them. And it’s too late already by the time you do realise. It’s this vicious circle, like the mire that keeps pulling you inside and will continue to do so till your last breath, but here’s the catch, ONLY IF YOU LET IT. Stay still for a while, without panicking and going into a frenzy, analyse where you stand in this mud of anxiety? How deep you stand? What do you see around you? And then gather all the energy in your heart and catch at the straws until the same mud banks you up against a tree.
Last modified: October 4, 2020
