Tag: anxiety

053b – if I die, do not say I was reckless and stupid

The mind goes to dark places tonight. I’ve recently moved to an apartment by myself in South Delhi, India. Delhi is infamous for being a terribly unsafe city, especially for women. I’m experiencing a bunch of strong thoughts right now, ranging from actual worries about my literal safety to judgement around having made a potentially bad, stupid, not a very thought-out decision. I’m also a little angry with the people who I did rely on for a “second opinion” during my search, who didn’t voice out their concerns when they could have. 

I’m trying to access stoicism, even though that’s tough to access when it comes to the worst-case scenarios around this kind of a problem: sexual assault, rape, a range of physical harm, murder. I don’t have reassurance to offer to myself. 

So that’s the first part of the problem, but considering it is not the average-case scenario, only the worst-case scenario, I want to address the other part of the problem. Let’s say I have a couple weeks of bad-sleep-nights, and I come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a good decision.. is that so bad? I didn’t originally want to make a fear-based decision based on my past philosophy, but maybe it’s okay to arrive to the conclusion that in certain situations, making fear-based decisions is fine too. (Of course, it’s the more rational thing to do for a lot of people, but the reason I hadn’t wanted to do that until now is because I run more anxious about many things, and I didn’t want my anxiety to impact my life, not too much.)

— 

Slept off eventually because I was tired enough to, so maybe I’ll continue this another time. I’m planning to have some backups in place though, more self-defence tools, and maybe some self-defence classes. Obviously, if anything major was to happen, this wouldn’t help much, but one can only hope. 

Anyway, the daytime is quite nice, apart from it being extremely hot, and I don’t want to keep the air-conditioning on all the time. I don’t know, I have so many conflicting desires in life, not sure how to find a middle-ground with any of them. 

I really love the house otherwise, like I can envision everything, once it’s all set up, I can imagine having a really nice stint here, socially, creatively, I think. And post August I think it also won’t be as hot anymore, so that’ll be quite nice. I need to go out for a walk today to explore the area a little bit, though I’m feeling a little lazy. 

One realisation I had yesterday was that I’ve had a lot of exposure therapy wrt my anxiety etc in the last couple days, so it’s good to know that when I do need to do things that are non-negotiable, I’m able to do them. This is good for self-trust. 

My third month in Delhi has ended, but really, my time here only begins now. Delhi, be good to me. 🙂 ❤ 

049a – what else is coming up?

Excited. Excited to finish 50k words soon. Excited to begin my Delhi phase soon. I’ve never actually lived in Delhi apart from college (which almost doesn’t count because we were so sheltered, but I’ve great memories of Delhi). I wanna do some research around whether safety in Delhi is actually as bad as it was a few years ago. Just based on “vibes”, I feel like things might’ve improved. But I don’t know, vibes can be misleading. Excited to setup my house and fill it with a bunch of art and plants. I’ve ordered new painting supplies so I’m also excited to practice some art soon. Excited to see this person-I’ve-met-a-couple-times, again. 

Content. I took a break from this because the excitement to paint took over me. It was a good idea since I painted a couple of abstract-ey landscapes which I really enjoyed. And they came out nice too. I was drained after so I didn’t get back to this until now. Content with some creative progress as well. I’ve gotten faster at painting the same things I was painting a few months earlier. I’ve also gotten better at leaving things at 90%. (Yes, going to the 100% is very important in certain cases, but personally, more often than not it’s better for me when I’m able to stop at a “good enough” state.) Content with this word-vomit as well, I quite like this grouping-thoughts-by-feelings thing. 

Anxious. Anxious about a dentist appointment I have tomorrow. Anxious about spending too much time with mom, I don’t know why. Anxious that I don’t have too many social plans for the coming week, and my parents are traveling so I essentially won’t have anyone at home. Which.. I was excited about earlier but I haven’t planned the week well enough to still be excited about it. But maybe I can do some planning over the weekend. Anxious about some of the tasks on my todo list which I really don’t want to get to. But I’ll have to, so that’s going to be tomorrow and the weekend as well.  

Unmotivated. Unmotivated to think about certain long-term questions that I thought I can take my time with, but.. since 2 months of chilling are about to be over, I might need to think about some of them sometime this month. Unmotivated to respond to a bunch of texts I haven’t been feeling like looking at. 

Doubtful. Doubtful about how much social media usage I’m okay with. I’ve been trying to cut down on Instagram consumption a bit, but not super seriously, but I know deep down that as long as I continue to get some amount of dopamine from social media, I’m not going to put (as much) effort into other things, the more real things. But I know I can’t cut Instagram completely since it’s a big outlet for art-sharing for me. 

Dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the amount of physical exercise I got today. Definitely need to get more tomorrow. 

Theorising. I do think it might be important to cut down (or completely eliminate) social media if I want to increase satisfaction overall. The wanting-to-be-everywhere problem only comes up more when you get a bunch of exposure from a bunch of people in different places. 

046a – time distribution

The part of me that worries about the future is also the part that has a really good imagination. I imagine being 60 and realising that I’ll have a lot of time to create all the art that I want. Provided my health stays somewhat okay, I can still do creative stuff at 60. Which also means it’s worth investing in the skills I want to pick up. Which means even if I’m not making great paintings right now, it’s still worth just doing the thing since I have around 20-30 years at least to get to the point my current self might probably be super proud of, then. 

I don’t have to rush over anything. As long as I’m not irrational or completely stupid about the way I spend my money, I think I can afford to take my time with things. 

In other news, I miss Amsterdam a little bit. I imagine everything must be really beautiful now that the summer must have arrived fully. I miss the afternoons, the evenings, I miss biking for errands. I miss storytelling nights at Mezrab and poetry nights at Labyrinth. I miss the coffee and the bread, and a random “Bedankt” here and there. 

Reconnecting with my friends here in India has been great though. There’s a level of familiarity and familiality (this should be a word) that is almost unbeatable.   

May has passed decently and June is going to be occupied with some travel. Once I’m back (ie July) I’ll start looking for apartments and move out of my parents’ place as soon as I find one. Looking forward to that, quite a bit. I’ve kicked off dating again and that’s been good, at least in the sense that I can afford to feel optimistic a bit, and don’t have to beat myself up about not putting in the effort on this front. I’m going to be 28 soon! Despite theoretically being in what I call “my yolo era”, of course the weight of societal expectations will trigger me about all of this from time to time. And the best defence to that (for my sake, I mean, not as an answer to society) of course, is — action.

I’ve been struggling a bit with how much time and bandwidth I want to reserve for the part of me that feels duty bound towards certain people (like family and friends). I think this is how I’d want to divide it*:  

  • Dating (20%) (14 hours)
  • Creative Goals and Pursuits (30%) (21 hours)
  • Well-Being & Health (20%) (14 hours) [Includes recreation] 
  • Social (15%) (10 hours)
  • Responsibilities (15%) (10 hours)
  • Misc [Future Planning? Lol idk? Other things] 

Okay I think this helps. This tells me how much I can afford to spend on these buckets and if I did actually spend my time this way I probably wouldn’t be unhappy. Currently I’m not living in ideal conditions so my time is not distributed this way, which is fine. I’m hopeful that once the distribution moves closer to what I’ve listed above, things should be better. I’ve left a bucket open for other things that may come up and demand some of this usable time of mine.

Anyway, good sesh. Let me know how y’all spend your time and if I’ve missed important buckets!  

*Rough weekly estimates. Calculated on the basis of having 10*7 hours of usable time every week after accounting for sleep, food etc, commute. 

043a – body dysmorphia ft. other feelings

I’m tired. Tired of living in my head. And yet, coming back to the present is so tedious. I don’t know why though. I don’t know. Maybe there’s feelings I’m trying to avoid. Who am I kidding, of course there’s feelings I’m trying to avoid. Feelings like.. like I’ve “wasted” my weekend. Like I actually don’t even know what I want to spend my time on. Like the things I want to spend my time on aren’t appealing anyway. Like it’s terribly hard, living in my body, because I constantly feel shitty. I’m sad about how anxious it makes me to step outside on a day I’m not feeling good about myself. My body dysmorphia is so strong. My avoidance behaviours make me feel so disconnected from the world sometimes. 

Okay, 2 minutes of meditation just helped me just now. I also remembered the first time I’d successfully been able to use meditation to feel okay. It was after after my first big/ever breakup. And I vividly remember the pain I was feeling at the time, and this insane urge to “just want to see her” once. I don’t know how I knew what meditation really was (I mean, it wasn’t as big and common a word back then), but I somehow did. And I looked it up and actually went out of my house to just try out some walking meditation. And man, it really was something. I guess awareness can be magical. The awareness that lets me observe myself feeling the shitty feelings. 

Yesterday was the first time I was actually overwhelmed by a positive emotion. I was feeling a ton of excitement about an idea that came to me and I really just couldn’t hold it or process it. I think it was combined with anxiety too, perhaps, which is why it wasn’t purely pleasurable. But I knew it was like 70% excitement and 30% something else. I don’t know. Eventually, I was able to calm down. 

I only have two weeks until I move and that’s kind of not sinking in either. I seem to have a lot of time but nothing to actually want to fill it with. Read a little bit about body dysmorphia on reddit and about how some people struggle with the same shit I do and I feel a little better now. 

There’s a lot of things I do to simply “avoid regrets”. I know that’s okay but I do wonder what life would be like I were able to do things because I “want to” do them. Basically, can pure “regret minimisation” be a good strategy? Maybe not, right? I don’t know, this needs more introspection. 

I really wanna move soon so I can start dating again. It’s been incredibly boring and hopeless over the last 1-2 months since I haven’t been able to do that. 

I think note to self: The third day is always a stretch. I did step out of the house for groceries yesterday but it still wasn’t enough. I think three straight days of “no plans as such” just does not work for me. Gotta stop at two, at max. 

040b – how do you like to travel?

I dream of a vacation where I don’t have to worry about little things the night before it begins. I’d have an easy morning, actually have breakfast, have enough time to dilly-dally and then finally begin my journey, which wouldn’t be a long one. It’d be a 2-3 hour drive to maybe a small village in the countryside. I’d be able to check into the guesthouse that I got from wherever with a key that was left for me under the doormat. The guesthouse would already be stocked with some basic groceries like bread, butter, eggs, coffee and milk, sufficing for at least the evening and the next morning. (I just realised I’m describing a famous five holiday lol) 

Instead, I worry a good amount the night before. Responding to the airbnb host about our check-in time (because not all airbnbs are self check-in), web check-in, the remaining 30% of my packing, waking up on time. I wake up later than I wanted so I’m not able to squeeze in a coffee or a snack before leaving my house. 

My relationship with travel is kind of mixed. I think my peers like it way more than I do, and I do sometimes feel pressurised by the push for it. But I do love many things about venturing out of your daily life, I love that I’m a little more open as a person when I’m traveling, I love that traveling is one of the ways to ensure that you’ll have experiences that wouldn’t have had otherwise or could have planned for. Some of my best memories with people I like have been on trips. 

But because I have an anxiety disorder, the cost to all of this is not low. It means I’m fairly anxious ~2/x days (because taking flights is almost always a high anxiety activity for me). And while some of the things have gotten a lot better than even 3-4 years ago, overall I’d still say it’s like being in a more fragile or “at risk” state when I’m traveling. If things go well, it’s all good, but if something goes wrong it could affect me in ways that I can’t always predict. 

But like I said, even as I write this, I’m realising just how much things have gotten better. I’m learning that I like mixed itineraries, I like having some rough plans but with enough room to change them. I like traveling with people who can be a little accommodating of me and my preferences. (Of course, I make sure to tell them this beforehand) And I’m also learning how to communicate to my travel buddies when I beed something specific (this could be simple things like time or space or just more patience for my emotions from their side). I like that spending time with someone you already know and like but “in a different place” adds a lovely new dimension to the relationship. 

I’ve also gotten better at tuning out of work as soon as my break begins. Most of all, I’m learning to not worry about the “relative value” of an activity. ie “Travelling seems to make my peers really happy but for me it’s always mixed feelings”.  I’m learning to focus on the absolute value of it, ie only for me, in my context. It’s a highly personal thing and I’m allowing myself to treat it that way. 

035a – big changes 

Really need the noise to quieten down. External, internal, all of it. Anxiety’s been pretty high lately. I “overthink” every little decision I have to go through. Wish some of the days would pass by easier. A 4-day long weekend in the middle of apartment hunting is just the worst. The first thing everyone asks me when they talk to me is whether I found a house yet or not. It’s frustrating, though I’m not sure why. Because I’m worried about it? It’s a trigger, I guess. 

Everyone’s priorities in life are so different, it’s hard to remember that it’s okay that that’s the case. The context that’s shaped all of us is so different, even if we may have somehow ended up in the same location at this point in time. Someone said the past doesn’t really matter, it’s what you decide in this moment that shapes you. It sounds wonderful, but I’m not sure if I believe it.

Need to do some of the mundane things: cleanup, etc. Need my space to be better for relaxation. (and work too, lol) 

I actually don’t have a lot of “things” to do right now, not too many. But until I finalize a house I’m just not able to focus on any of the smaller stuff, even if it’s really tiny. So far, I think I liked San Francisco better than Amsterdam.. though I’m aware the former has three whole years on the other. I used to think I’m good with casual parties every day and that I might enjoy them too, but man – this city really is on a whole other level. Or so it feels. I do crave some like-minded people around me though. Someone I could really share FeELinGs with.

I’m really envious of people who can adjust to big changes (or I guess even smaller changes) faster. I know I’m not like them, though how I wish I were. I miss the people I’ve said goodbye to, but even more – I miss the feelings I’ve said goodbye to. And it’s that classic problem – even if I were to go back to those people and try to feel the same things, I wouldn’t. Because they were unique to that time. And it’s fine, I’m not closed to what’s in store for me, I know I’ll learn to enjoy other things and other people, but I guess there’s just a lot of weeks I need to go through before I can get to that.

My third week here is about to end in a couple of days. Let’s see what it brings before it ends. Amsterdam, be good to me. 🙂 ❤ 

033b – monday blues

Today feels like the perfect Sunday to try writing a little bit. I have a couple drafts waiting to be released but I’ve been unable to bring the word-count up, so a fresh attempt this will be. The last few weeks have been terribly busy, both actually and mentally. Had internal interviews, had a small public-ish music thing (yes!! more on that in this post, hopefully), had multiple Diwali parties to go to for the first time in a while, and on top of all this I’m making travel plans and god that shit is incredibly time-consuming. 

I do feel a little hungover from yesterday night though, so I’m not sure how coherent I might end up being. Forgive me if not very. Smoking has gone up from the last time I might have written anything, so today I’m trying this new thing where every time I feel like smoking, I’m just going to clean up a bit of my surroundings instead. 

I’ve been feeling very free ever since Friday went by, though now that Monday’s approaching again I’m thinking about some of the work that I didn’t do on Friday. Probably going to go do that right now and come back to this in a bit. 

— 

Well, I didn’t pick this up yesterday, but I’m back here now. It’s hard to sit still and write. Today’s been an anxious day again. The sun didn’t come out, and I find that completely kills my productivity. It’s 4pm now and I would like to do things before the light goes away. (Daylight savings sucks, it really does). I really want to restart working out a bit, I’ve completely given it up since the last few months. 

Lately, I’ve also been struggling to make emotional space for dating. Not sure what it is, in some ways I feel quite emotionally independent. Which I always thought would be a great thing, but I’m not sure anymore.  

Ah, my thoughts are all over the place right now. How does one manage this? Todo lists etc also get old. I keep making new ones every time I have a bunch of new tasks on my radar. Maybe I’m over-stimulated. That’s a thing, right? Maybe I should meditate a bit after this is done. Provided that ever happens. 

Work’s been a little annoying, there’s a bunch of vague things I need to get done. It’s not super stressful but most of the stuff isn’t well-defined.. which was rarely a problem for me before but I think today is just not a good day for me, perhaps. I should also cut myself some slack, my “move” problem takes up a lot of space in my head, without me being able to account for it. Guess I should wrap that up by the end of this week. 

Alright well, this really was just a brain dump. My apologies, folks. I’ll hopefully have something interesting to talk about soon enough, and I’ll make time and space to make it a coherent read for you. 

028b – flights

Adding this picture here since I think it has some interesting things worth noting. I love how it has things related to the pandemic as well as the fact that it’s the pride month – something else I wanted to talk about it in this piece, but didn’t end up getting to. Still worth it, though, I think.

I’m stuck in a five hour flight. Two of the five hours have passed and I’m slowly starting to enjoy it. Had a terrible night since this was a 6 am flight, and why past me thought it’d be feasible is beyond me. Spent the whole night in the “too anxious to fall asleep” and “too sleep-deprived to focus on anything” loop / limbo. But.. I’m here now, and not unhappy nor frustrated. The airport was terribly packed, by the way. In a way I’ve almost never seen before. It’s not completely unexpected since the pandemic is sort of coming to an end here, or at least a pause (who’s to say, really), but still took me a little by surprise.

I was trying to write a little bit earlier too. I was thinking about how it’s been difficult to sit down and focus on writing coherently. I was thinking about how inspiration has been fleeting lately. How it does knock on the door from time to time but flees before I can invite her in. But it’s interesting how a medium-long flight offers exactly the right kind of an environment to focus. 

My body is, admittedly, quite uncomfortable, but I’m sure my plight is nothing next to that of the very tall boy sitting next to me who seems incredibly uncomfortable in the middle seat.
This got me thinking about the economics of shared but unequal travel, or in general… shared but unequal experiences. It’s been quite a while since travelers have been able to afford various privileges for an additional cost, but it’s one of the first times I’ve been on the more privileged side. It’s a weird feeling, I didn’t expect so much guilt around it. I wanted to let him know to let me know if he wanted the windows up or down, and for a minute I’d even felt like offering him my seat if it were slightly less uncomfortable. Then I remembered I’d paid more for my seat and there was no reason for me to have to do that. So yeah, the guilt around privilege was and is very real. 

Anyway, my time in the States will be coming to end in around 7-8 months. And it’s weird how that changes things so much. I’ve noticed how ever since I got the confirmation of this news my perspective on my remaining time has shifted quite significantly. Every experience feels retrospective even as I’m living it. I was thinking about the people who made the last three and a half years worth recounting. Some of them were people I knew from before I moved, some I met once I got here. So, so happy and content with this last phase of my life. I think I’ve grown a significant amount and learnt so much about myself and what I want from life. Of course, I don’t know whether I would get everything I want or not.. but it’s still nice to feel more aware. 

Flights always bring up a lot for me. Something I can’t stop thinking about is the first flight I took when I was moving here. I was seated with another girl similar to me in age, and a married man probably in his 30s. The three of us had ended up talking a lot and having a great time (flights from India to the US are terribly long),  – and it just warms my heart to remember that experience. It was such a great welcome to this place, and I’ve always been so grateful to both of them for providing me with that. Hope I can pass that on to someone else at some point. 

028a – are you up to speed?

Haven’t posted in a while, I start things but don’t end up completing them. This is definitely going to be a good old word-vomit. Hoping to complete it tonight. Things have been busy, somehow. I moved to my own place a few weeks back and though it’s all been nothing short of spectacular, it’s definitely also been a little lonelier, if I’m being honest. I did expect a little bit of that to happen, and I’d promised myself I’d have some structures in place to not let it get out of hand. Structures like a minimum of two social activities per week (one during the week and one on the weekend), and mostly – I’ve been abiding by that. But looks like I might need three of those? Or I might need the two to be really fulfilling… 

Got my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine a couple days ago and had a high fever as a side effect. Again – this was something expected but I’d forgotten what it feels like, don’t think I’ve had a fever in the last two years (hurrah!), so it was definitely very draining, exhausting.  

Also been feeling a little bit anxious here and there. Part of me feels like it’s because I haven’t written in a while. Biweekly summaries of “what’s been up” have been quite helpful in the recent past, and even though I’ve been catching up with people and giving them a bit of all of this – it’s not the same as doing it for (?) myself. I think it’s because when there’s other people involved – new things sometimes get added up. Probably things like – feelings about their reactions, their own updates, this, that. 

I think most of the anxiety and the fog is because of the state of the pandemic back home – the second wave hit India really hard and pretty much everyone I know is or has been suffering – either directly or through families. My grandfather passed away too, and though he lived a long, full life and it had to happen one way or the other, it’s been weird to grieve while I’m away from the rest of my family. It’s been weird to half-heartedly grieve, since I know most of it will hit me only when I visit his home. That’s where most of him resides, for me, and I can’t fully feel or process his absence until I actually go there. And I don’t really know when I’ll get to go, considering how unsafe it’d be to travel to India right now. 

Thankfully work’s not been too stressful the last couple weeks. I managed to get a decent amount of time for many of my creative pursuits, I’m recording a lot of music, doing a decent bit of photography, meeting new people – enjoying it a lot. Want to ensure I keep working hard enough to sustain this job. I see the benefits of it from time to time. 

Well, looks like we’re done. I want to post something I wrote the morning I heard about baba’s death, but maybe I’ll wrap it up around some context and post it soon. 

026a – have you tried turning it off and on again?

How do I explain anxiety to someone who’s never experienced it? How do I explain what it feels like to constantly be on edge, like I persistently have a reverse countdown or the reverse alphabet running in my head in the background? How do I explain why I’m not able to fall asleep even after 36 hours of being awake? And even if I’m able to explain it, does it achieve the purpose? What am I trying to achieve by making other people understand? What am I looking for? Sympathy, empathy, compassion? I get that regularly from most of my friends and family. I get a decent amount of it. Why do I have this need to for my anxiety to be “properly” understood? 

I might need to look for a support group. I’ve had this on my list for ages but this is the first time I’ve written it out as a task to primarily focus on a few weeks down the line.

I was fully occupied this week with house-hunt and messed up sleep, so processing my feelings / writing took a huge hit, and I find myself suffering because of it. Definitely consumed a lot of media and I think that wasn’t great.

Already feeling a little better, thank you, me.

I need to be careful about how I spend my time because the moment my routine and sleep and food suffers, things start getting tough very quickly. I don’t think I’m able to judge my social needs very well. I end up spending time texting with people quite often in the day but I’m not sure if I need to or whether it’s actually doing me any good or just ending up being a zero value time-sink.

The anxiety medication (it’s been 5 weeks since I started it) has been helping a lot but the last two days have been high anxiety days. I missed a couple doses too which got me worried about whether that was the reason for them, but I’m also quite sure that’s not how it works.

Covid’s been weird in terms of bonding with colleagues at work. Being honest and vulnerable about some sensitive things with someone you’ve never met is quite difficult, even if you keep doing it repeatedly. I wanna say it gets easier each time you do it, but honestly, the difference is so minimal it barely feels noticeable.
Of course, grand scheme of things – nothing matters, or it doesn’t matter as much as I think it does, blah blah blah.

I want to be able to fall asleep without having to do this. I know it’s okay to use writing as a tool to feel better, but I feel weird to think I’m almost dependent on it? Or maybe it’s the kind of a need that’s similar to physical exercise and it’s probably okay to have a need like that.. This barely took twenty minutes so I suppose I could find that time a couple times a week.