Children of Anxiety

The last two years exposed something to me that I didn’t even realize was present in me: anxiety. I’ve always dealt with anxiety, mainly of the social variety. I never had much luck making friends because one way or another, regardless of whether it was my fault or not, they all left me behind. I also didn’t exactly inspire fear or respect into people, either. I’d lay awake at night, thinking about something I did or said that shouldn’t have been done or said, or about a girl that I blew my chances with, or about how I wished I handled a situation with a boy in the class, or about anything, or about nothing at all, just tossing and turning and pacing the floors of my house until it was time to get up for school and start the cycle all over again. I never got enough sleep in high school, and it hasn’t gotten better in college because my anxiety has gotten worse. I heard from a lot of people that college exacerbated their previous mental health issues, and I was no different. I rarely, if ever, sat down and did my work the way I was supposed to, because I was too busy partying and being depressed to actually focus on what I was at college for. But I had goals! Ambition! I was there for a reason. There was a bunch of things I wanted to do once I got to campus, but the main point was that I wanted to be successful. More importantly, I knew, in my mind, that if I wasn’t successful, then I will have failed. I would be just like my father and my uncles and most of my family before me. However, I wasn’t doing nearly enough to make sure I was actually successful. I thought school would come as easily as it always did. I took success for granted. Even worse, though I didn’t realize it at the time, some part of my self-worth was tied to my success in school. I punished myself relentlessly. For some reason, I thought I was more talented than I was. I thought that the world truly was at my fingertips, and that I didn’t need to do anything to reach out and grab it.

My second year in college was plagued by waves of bad news, futile efforts to push forward with a routine that wasn’t working, and no decent amount of sleep whatsoever. Constantly thinking about my failures late at night and then getting up to repeat them was doing nothing for my state of mind. Only perfect practice makes perfect, right? Well, my practice was anything but perfect, but I did at least try to work hard. And I failed. and I got depressed. I tried things not unfamiliar to things many success gurus try to push. Waking up at 6 A.M (already had not getting sleep down!), adopting a no-nonsense, no-excuses kind of attitude. What this actually accomplished was destroying my mental health, since you need sleep in order to be productive and you have to be kind to yourself sometimes when you do inevitably fail at some points. Not too kind, of course, because this leads to complacency, but the kind of self-torture that personal improvement experts say is required for a life worth living so that they can sell books and seminars is wholly unnecessary. This, on top of me breaking my back at crappy jobs, left me in a state of confusion. I had managed to work too hard while at the same time doing nothing at all.

The era of social media and memes and TikTok have made it easier than it has ever been to become rich, famous, and successful. You only need to ask Doja Cat, or Lil Yachty, or Lil Nas X about how it only takes one song to get popping. As far as social media goes, the idea of kids getting paid millions of dollars for making minute long videos in L.A mansions would have seemed asinine five years ago, but alas, TikTok is here to stay. And it has arguably become just as, if not more, influential than mainstays Instagram and Twitter in an incredibly short amount of time. The impact of social media on our lives have been documented in nauseating detail, but perhaps the biggest component on how it negatively affects us is how we compare our lives to the perceptions of others. We will likely never see the worst parts of a person‘s life on their Instagram page, only the best. This leads to us criticizing ourselves way too harshly because our lives are nowhere near as lavish as a TikTok star’s or any celebrity’s life looks, not realizing that their lives are even more stressful than ours, since they never post the horrors of their lives. It also has deceived us into thinking that becoming successful takes less talent and commitment than it actually does. Then, when we find out that it‘s nowhere near as easy as it looks, we try to overcompensate and sacrifice our health and well-being trying to chase dreams sold to us by folks who don’t or care about us. And on and on it goes.

I don’t believe New Year’s Resolutions are a thing. I don’t think a person can switch on and off their worst impulses at the drop of a hat (or ball). However, I do believe in taking small, measured, and purposeful steps toward the things you want. My goal for this year is to take better care of myself. In the same token, my happiness, at this point, is tied to my success. So I’m going to do my best to prepare and work toward my success without jeopardizing what’s left of sanity. But more importantly, I’m going to accept failure. I’m going to let myself be human.