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Thoughts on Anxiety

I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety lately. Particularly the fact that we (or at least I) have been trained to not trust it. I don’t know how many times I have read or heard the term “your anxiety is lying to you”. We are trained to combat anxiety by deciding it’s lying to us. Lying about the future. Lying about what is coming. Lying about everything. There have been many times in my life where I have been anxious about something and it has turned out to be totally fine. That happens a lot. So, many times our anxiety is lying to us. But what happens when our anxiety is just our intuition screaming at the top of its lungs? Telling us this person, situation, job, relationship, etc. is not for us. We are on the wrong path. For women we have also been trained to not trust ourselves. Society has been sending us messages our entire lives about why we shouldn’t trust ourselves. But lately I have been thinking; what would happen if I trusted my anxiety?

I think there are three kinds of anxiety.

(I’ll probably read this tomorrow and decide there are four or five but for now let’s go with three.)

One is that anxiety you get before you’re about to do something scary and new but exciting. The nervous-excitment-anxiousness. The butterflies.

Another is the kind of anxiety about the future. Anxiety about money, about a career, a child’s future etc. This kind of anxiety means you are living in the future. I believe it was in “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle where I learned about combating this kind of anxiety. You want to live in the future enough to have a little bit of a plan, but don’t spend too much time there. Sure you should set aside money for retirement but don’t spend every minute of your life worrying about it. Be there enough to plan, then come back to the present. 

I am also starting to believe in a third kind of anxiety. The kind that is really your body trying to tell you something. I have experienced this kind of anxiety a few times in my life. For me it comes from my gut. Deep inside me there is a knot that then sends messages throughout my entire body making me nauseated, shaky, makes my heart race and makes me want to completely disappear. My other kinds of anxiety can sometimes feel similar. But it doesn’t come from that deep center of my body. That knot deep down in the pit of my stomach. 

I used to believe (and by “used to” I mean like last week) that I shouldn’t trust any kind of anxiety. All anxiety is bad and needs to be dealt with or medicated away. But now I am starting to wonder what it would look like if I explored which anxiety I need to breath and work through and which anxiety is actually my body (or intuition, force, universe, etc.) trying to tell me I am on the wrong path, that person is not good for you, this situation is not for you, etc. What if we learned to trust our bodies?

Now a few thoughts about anxiety on a larger scale. 

Growing up and after being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder I started to see a trend of people my age being diagnosed with anxiety (or at least experiencing what I recognized as anxiety but unfortunately had non understanding parents around them). And now I am reading about how Gen Z is also experiencing high levels of anxiety. Many blame social media and phones, which, I agree are not helping the issue necessarily. And part of it could be because more and more people are opening up about mental health so it’s more okay to talk about. But I fully believe that a lot of it is a reaction to the broken world we live in. The analogy I love is that us sensitive people are the canaries in the coal mine. We sense that things are toxic before everyone else. With the Internet comes more opportunities to learn about the experiences of people who aren’t like us. Which is a beautiful thing. But it is also opening our eyes (especially us privileged white people) to a world of so much suffering. So much brokenness. The system we are living in doesn’t work for a vast majority of people. And on top of that, our planet, our home, the only place we can currently live, is dying! Our world is literally melting around us. I wish the older generations would look at the newer generations and instead of saying, “they are broken and coddled and can’t handle life,” and say, “what is broken in this world and how can we help fix it?” 

What if we all looked at our own anxieties, that deep knot in our stomach, and think, “what is broken or wrong in my life and how do I fix it?”

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The Los Angeles Adventure

People stay in the same town they grew up in? Why? I always thought it was normal to move away, travel all around and live far away from where you were born. Later in life I realized I was the weird one. Most people grow up, get married and settle down in the same town (or at least same area of the state) they grew up in. There was a short period in time when I was younger that I wanted to live right next to my favorite park down the street but for the most part I have always dreamed of moving far away, traveling, and seeing new things. My options changed from Florida, South Carolina, Chicago, Australia, London, New Zeeland, Colorado, etc. My wanderlust was vast.

During college my boyfriend (now husband) and I started talking about moving to Los Angeles. To this day neither of us really remember who had the idea first (it was probably me) but we started saving up for the big move out west. It was years after we made the decision to move to LA that we would actually be on the road. First, after spending two years in Chicago, I moved back to Michigan to finish college at the glorious Kendall College of Art and Design. Three years later I graduated in May, moved in with Korey in Chicago, got married in August, and then we were on our way to the magnificent west coast that following March. Here is the story of our 2,200 mile journey to our new beginning.

 

March 22 – See you later, Chicago

For about 6 months Korey and I (and my cat, Odette) have been squeezing into a 200 sq ft apartment in Chicago. Most of my things stayed behind at my parents’ home in Michigan because we simply do not have space. This apartment is a challenge. There is no counter (in kitchen nor bathroom), the front door doesn’t open all the way because it hits the refrigerator, the carpet is so gross I hate stepping on it, it has one tiny window, no water pressure in the bathroom (or hot water), we have roaches occasionally and it smells like something died no matter how much we bleach anything and everything. And at one point there was a homeless person squatting in the back stairwell of the building. Really classy place.

It’s March 22 and my parents drive to Chicago in a pickup to come help Korey and I pack up the apartment and bring our stuff back to Michigan. Even though I hate every inch of that apartment, it is hard to say goodbye. After all, it’s the apartment I traveled to countless times the past three years to visit Korey when he were living apart, it’s the first place we lived in together, and the first place we lived when we got married. A lot of memories and stories existed in that space and now we are letting it go to be lived in my someone else (god help them).

 

March 28 – The Goodbyes

After packing, packing and more packing, on March 28th I awake in my childhood bedroom about to leave for good and head off to California. Leaving is something I have dreamed about for as long as I can remember. But this day is difficult. As happy as I am that I’m taking this big step into the world, going on this adventure with my best friend and love of my life, I also feel as if someone has ripped my heart clean out of my chest. My mom, my dad, my home, my friends. All these things I am saying goodbye to and I don’t want to. In my mind I know I would regret not leaving, but my heart is screaming at me to stay. My parents decide they will come see us in August, but god, that is so far away. I force myself out of bed to face this emotional day.

Everyone spends most of the morning crying with a quick break when one of my best friends, Linny, gets up early to come see me. She brings with her this amazing scrapbook she made of our friendship and we promise we are just saying ‘see you later’ not ‘goodbye’. The rest of the morning is some last minute packing and more crying. Korey leaves to say another goodbye to his family while I stay home to be with my parents and say goodbye to my beloved Toyota RAV4 that got me through all those terrible Michigan winters.

 We make our way out to Korey’s Jeep, Serenity (named after the spaceship in the show Firefly), that is now packed to the brim and hooked up to our Uhaul trailer. After crying and hugging some more and putting my cat, Odette, in her carrier we climb into the Jeep, wave goodbye to my parents and we are west coast bound.

About two hours into the drive all hell brakes loose. Korey is driving, I am still crying, and Odette is going crazy trying to get out of her carrier and howling. She ends up breaking out of her carrier escaping into the Jeep. We pull over into a Burger King parking lot, Korey gets out and opens the back passenger door. Along with breaking the zipper on her carrier Odette had also put claw marks in the side of the Jeep door. Korey is so upset he slams the door and the window falls into the door. I end up being able to wrangle Odette and attach her leash so I can keep her from escaping the Jeep. During all the chaos I had been texting my parents what was happening. When I tell them about the window my dad calls me, asks for our location and then looks up the closest Jeep dealership so we can fix the window. We drive a couple miles and pull into the dealership with our trailer. Korey, I, and Odette all wait in the waiting room with our fingers crossed that they are able to fix the window. There is no way we can drive to California with the back window gone. A mechanic comes and tells us they don’t have the part required to fix the window but they were able to use cardboard pieces (that they charge us for, of course) to wedge the window so it will stay up. We are on our way again.

The rest of the day is uneventful. Odette is perfectly content now that she has broken out of her large expensive carrier to just curl up on the floor of the jeep. After driving through Michigan, Indiana and most of Missouri we make our first stop in Springfield, MO for the night. There is still a long journey ahead but we have made it through the most difficult day of saying goodbyes. California is just waiting for us to arrive.

 

March 29 & 30 – Two Long Days on the Road

Day number two we wake up in Springfield, MO, get back in the car and keep on driving. Day two is much easier than day one. Odette is content just riding in the backseat with her leash attached. We stop off in a parking lot in the middle of Oklahoma to make sandwiches and let Odette get some fresh air (she hates it). It’s another long day with ten hours of driving until we get to Amarillo, Texas where we spend our second night on the road.

After waking in our Texas hotel and having breakfast we are heading off to our next stop, Gallup, New Mexico. Along our way we make multiple pit stops to take photos of the barren landscape that is so different from the midwest. When we reach New Mexico we watch our ETA on the GPS get later and later. Poor Serenity is having to pull our trailer through the most intense head on wind I have ever experienced. We can only go turtle speed. After getting through the insane wind we make a pit stop in Albuquerque to see the house from Breaking Bad. After driving past the house really slow we miss our chance to take a photo because the owners of the house are sitting outside. So, acting like a couple creepers, we drive past again and because the house is on the driver’s side of the car I again am unable to get the photo. Turning around yet again we drive past the house a third time while I quickly snap a photo on my phone. After driving our inconspicuous Jeep and trailer through the neighborhood three times we are again on our way to Gallup.

In Gallup, New Mexico we plan to get together with Wendy Sturrus. Wendy was my preschool teacher and old family friend who moved to New Mexico several years ago to teach on the reservation. After dropping off Odette and overnight bags at our hotel we drive to Applebee’s where Wendy meets us for dinner (definitely no specialty vegan places here). She tells us all about the crazy stories of being a teacher and funny kids she has taught. Even one about a kid who has to wear glasses but they are too big for his face and keep falling off. Then she proceeds to tell us that the part of town our hotel is in is not good and asks us to text her the next day when we leave to make sure we survived alright. After dinner we head back to the hotel and try to sleep before another day of driving.

 

March 31 – Seeing Family

Our shortest drive so far starts is Gallup, NM at a less than nice Red Roof Inn. Luckily, Serenity and the trailer is still in the parking lot when we get up. As we drive through Arizona, on our way to our next stop in Mesa, AZ we start going up mountains and realize that neither of us knew there were mountains in Arizona. We were expecting mostly desert surroundings all day but have an incredible drive through the Tonto National Forest where, to our surprise, we see a tiny amount of snow. Serenity has a little difficulty getting our trailer through the mountains but we finally arrive at my great aunt and great uncle’s house in Mesa.

Aunt Rhonda and Uncle Mike are amazing hosts and it is great to visit with them since I only get to see them every couple years at the most. They are even pleased to host the cat. My Aunt Meg and Uncle Rob who live in Wyoming are also in town and my great Aunt Pat lives in Arizona so we are able to see everyone. The boys go out and grill burgers (Rhonda and Mike knew to get boca burgers for Korey and I) and we all have a fun time eating, laughing, and catching up.

 

April 1 – Our New Home

On April 1 we wake up early in order beat the Phoenix traffic to find Rhonda has made us a gourmet breakfast of oatmeal complete with topping options of berries, milk, brown sugar, and more. We are beyond grateful to her and to Mike who got up early to say goodbye even though last night he said he wouldn’t. After hugs and goodbyes we are starting our last day of driving. Today we will be at our new home.

At this point in the trip Odette is starting to be annoyed with the car. She spends most of the morning jumping from my lap to the back seat and climbing over everything in the back. All this accompanied with her signature pitiful meow. Korey and I are getting anxious as well. Our fifth day in the car and we are ready to be in our new place. Unfortunately as soon as we hit Los Angeles, of course, there is traffic. The last ten miles consist of all of us whining with Odette. We are in traffic at a dead stop, Odette is bouncing all over meowing, my butt hurts from sitting, and the AC in Serenity will only work on full blast. I am either sweating to death or in need of a sweater, no in-between. The last five miles of the trip seem to be the longest.

We finally arrive at our new home. Our landlord meets us in the parking lot to show us our parking spot and gives us our keys. First thing that goes up is Odette, her food, and her litterbox. After getting rehydrated two amazingly generous friends, Chris and Victoria, come over to help us unload our trailer. With their help we are unloaded in no time. When the trailer is empty we sit on the floor of the balcony and drink some Oberon beers that are leftover from our wedding.

Chris and Victoria leave and Korey and I are tackling unpacking when we realize we are both starving. We are able to find a thai place that delivers at 10:00 at night. Because we don’t have any chairs I am sitting on the piano bench, Korey is sitting on the cooler, and we use a box as our table. We sit and take in the fact that we are in our new home, our new beginning, we are in California.