I was told by the counsellor at my university counselling service at the beginning of the last academic year that I have Anxiety Disorder. All the time that I’ve been stressing, feeling my heart pounding in my chest as I sit down to write an essay or to do my seminar reading.. that wasn’t because I wasn’t capable or because I was stupid. I didn’t spend hours procrastinating because I was being lazy, or because I didn’t care enough. It was because my anxiety was taking over the real me. My thoughts of crippling self-doubt were not because I am inadequate or incapable, it’s because my mind had developed bad habits. It was such a relief.
As I walked out of the counsellors office, I felt a massive wave of relief. I wanted to cry, but now instead of crying because of despair, I was weeping with unbelievable joy. The way I was feeling wasn’t just who I was, I wasn’t just a person who would always try and fail. There was a solution and my life could change.
I also immediately told my closest friends. This was partly because I wanted to share my happy news, but also because now I had an explanation. Now, I could explain to my friends who never suffered with essay stress or academic self-doubt that I wasn’t just stupid. The response to this was really over-whelming. I could tell that they didn’t fully understand. They understood the logistics. My mind took a few different paths from theirs, but I could tell, that no matter how much I explained it, they couldn’t understand how it actually felt to be in this mindset. Clearly, this was no fault of their own. As I was lying in bed, I was thinking about that. It was strange to me that the people closest to me, just didn’t understand. This was because… their minds worked completely differently to mine. They didn’t get that feeling of dread when it came to reading a book, they just read it. So… I thought it’d be quite a cool idea to embrace a moment of my anxiety and turn it into something helpful and productive. I thought that instead of blocking the spiralling thoughts which can be so disabling, I decided to embrace them and attempt to document them.
I decided that the best way to document my thoughts would be through my laptop. I can type so fast that most of the time it feels like an extension of myself rather than a conscious writing process. It is also a small homage to Samuel Beckett. I took a class which focused solely on the nobel prize winner whilst I was in America, and I fell in love with the obscurity of his work. Three Novels is a book that allowed me to see the power of the unconscious mind. The form of the novels are unpunctuated and often confusing. As Molloy documents his thoughts and life, I have attempted to document my thoughts as they appear from my mind. (Of course, because of the process of writing and self-writing, it isn’t unaffected by the world around me and my own writing style.) Here’s what a wrote whilst sat in Costa. I took a gulp of my cappuccino and allowed the thoughts in the back of my mind to take over:
I’m shaking.
I’m so flabbergasted. flabbergasted. These are things I care about, but they all come out in a jumble. A jumble of thoughts, which all connect too much. They can’t be defined. I want to write so many articles but I’m terrified that I’ll run out after I’ve written just a few. I’m already being too general. They won’t be distinctive. Fuck, I want to do this, I can do this…can’t I? Can I? Can I? What makes me think that I’m so good at this? Why do I have such a high opinion of myself that I think I can be one of those few successful writers? Everything that I say is just what hundreds, thousands, probably millions of people are thinking. Why do I think I’m special? I think I am, but what if I’m not? What if I’m wrong, and even if I try I’m still going to end up a massive failure? My friends are much cleverer than I am. My parents have been successful, but they aren’t top lawyers, they don’t have flats in London for me to live in. Maybe I’m just not going to be successful, because other people are naturally smarter than I am. I can feel that I sensation in my nose. I cannot cry in Costa. Stop thinking. Calm down. This is so embarrassing. I wish I could do this. I wish I could. I felt that I could do it earlier. I was really excited, and now I’ve ruined it all. F*** sake. Now I only have a few more hours and I’m going to be too tired after I finish work tomorrow. Why am I not clever enough? WHY?! I want to be successful, I want people to care about what I think. I want this, but do I want it enough? I do, but I didn’t start doing this young enough. If you want to be a writer, then you need to have written a wrote amateur novel by the age of 22.
What I wrote down was so much longer than I expected. Previously, I had been too anxious to write a word of an article I’d had planned however as soon as I let my mind lose onto the screen I produced so much in such a short amount of time. Minds work differently, and they’re so powerful. It’s really very exciting. Sometimes my thoughts lead from one doubt to another, but other times it leads to the development of a really exciting idea that I wouldn’t have been able to think of if I’d tried to force it. Trusting the paths that our minds is an incredibly refreshing process.
I am TP 