Mama, it's not your fault

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem and assalam alaikum wr wb,

I created this blog many moons ago because my friends said they enjoyed reading my Facebook notes. However, I preferred to shelter my thoughts by sharing them with the people I loved. So I kept my ruminations on Facebook.

But now, as my anxiety disorder threatens to boil over, I'm turning to people for help, even my boss R. who, up to this point, I have considered a demon from hell and a mortal enemy (Yeah, I have a tendency to be dramatic.)

She suggested blogging, saying that writing is always the best therapy for writers.

She might be right. Here I am then. It is worth a shot.

Anxiety used to be a friend – a little pussycat called Stress. It assured me that I was alive, that I was functioning. Once in a while, I would put it away, give it to my parents to look after and party like it's 1999 with my close buddies and my family. Over the years, it has grown to the size of a dragon. I imagine myself face to face with it, hot coals in its eyes, the steam rising from its nostrils suffocating me, its forked tail drawing me gently inwards, ever closer to its demonic jaws. But still it is a familiar friend. I might reach out to touch its scaly hide, made tough by years of shielding me from the outside world. It might be purr like the pussycat I once knew and together we will cry with our shared pain, big dragon healing tears.

But I have been told I have to banish my friend because it is stifling me, sapping the love and joy out of my life, murdering my creativity.

I went to my first counseling session yesterday. I did a very long personality assessment, not unlike those darn Tickle personality tests – though those help not a jot, of course. Some questions inspired a WTF response in me, like, "Sex just doesn't interest me." (It was a True or False questionnaire) Umm…no. Hell to the yeah, sex interests me. Especially with Jensen Ackles.

Others were like, "I feel sexier than most other people." Seriously? Seriously?? Is that a disorder? Narcissism, maybe?

Upon analysing my responses, I had learnt to respond to being spurned socially by self criticizing, by self-circumscribing. My social anxiety led me to feel inadequate as compared to my peers and I compensated by throwing myself into my books, since this solitary pursuit was comforting to me as well as assured approval.

I remember Dr. G telling me that my mother, for whom a structured life came very easily, might be the one whose approval I've been pining for all these years. Me, I'm not that into structure. This, I've always known - I've just suppressed to make her happy. I wanted to be a film-maker. She and I had unbearable screaming matches, because she could not bear the thought of me being a penniless and unsuccessful film-maker. So I turned to journalism instead, in an attempt to find an acceptable creative outlet somewhere. When I've tried to circumscribe my creativity by keeping it within the lines of "Plot, Characterisation, blah, blah", it has withered and died. Writing has caused me anxiety when it used to give me great joy.

I know my mother was just trying to protect me. I am the youngest, the only girl in the family and the one who was her baby for the longest. As all mothers do, she tried to mould me in her image. However, unfortunately for both of us, my nature corresponds more with my loosey-goosey clown-like daddy, whom I adore. During these troubling times, I've found a great deal of comfort with him. In his smile, so much like mine. In his incessant ability to crack jokes. In all of this love that I can feel, even when he looks at me. With my mother, I cannot escape the feeling that she is disappointed in me for my failed relationship, for my "illness", for my "weakness. She has more or less said it once or twice. Saying that I was "weak" for relying on my dad for comfort. Saying that I was worrying my parents sick. Of course, she kissed me and held my hand for the longest time before she told me these things, but my heart doesn't seem to have registered the impact of those actions.

I really can't remember everything my counselor told me yesterday. Which is bad, because I remember feeling a wave of relief when he told me that my cure was in my control. Unlearning these psychological responses sounds a lot more satisfying to me than incessantly popping pills.

All I know is that I've been suffering – tremendously. Life has become too much for me. I feel like the outside world is a wave crashing into me and my body is revolting, threatening to implode.

He told me not to think of myself as a sick person anymore. I just have a few kinks I need to iron out, that's all. As a result, I've amended the following poem that I wrote a few days ago:

My only prayer

I want to be young again
To look at a colour and feel its warmth stir some childhood memory from sleep.
I want to laugh and feel it vibrating in my rib-cage, my heart shaking too with mirth
Instead of shrinking away, whispering, "Liar."

I want the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days to mean something.
Something good.
I want to look back and see more than the funeral pyre.
The ashes of my past life.
When I have achieved this, I want a man.
I would say, "not just any man".
But no man is "just any".
I don't like skinny men or sloppy men.
Or smelly men.
Though I love scruff-muffins.
I like men who are lean, muscly, but not
Walking testosterone.
But none of that really matters
I want someone who'll sing along to Michael Jackson
With the top down on his new convertible.
I want someone that knows what my favourite colour is
What I need in my wardrobe
What size shoe I wear
How and where I would like to sell my words
I want a shining future.
A future of damp sheets, laughter and lazy Sunday mornings
Living room brawls and tears and Little Women
Dirty dancing and dirty jokes and dirty happy children.
Children
Flesh of my flesh
How I have yearned for you since my clock started ticking.
Why, Lord?
Please hear my prayer.
Please.
I have no other desire.
No other desire
No other desire.

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,

Zed.