A for "Anxiety"

This is my First Blog, from the April A-Z challenge.

Finally, it's a Sunday. And I really want to be there at the event.

The one peaceful Sunday that comes after a series of sleepless ones. And I have good news, my flatmate is not home. That means no energy-draining afternoon badminton matches and no hour-long grocery shopping after that. That means I have a complete day to practice and have my favorite afternoon siesta.

I start the day on a pretty excited note, and at around 9, when I am done with my laundry, I hear a sound on my doorbell. I suspect failed plans and skeptically open the door. What I see next is me losing 4 hours of peak time and the entire day's reserve of energy. I welcome my flatmate with a smile on my face.

And I expected, he manages to convince me to come to play and go for groceries shopping. There were just 4 people in the group. So after playing continuously for the entire time without a break, I go shopping in my exhausted state. And somehow the idea of getting clothes enters my mind.

Let me tell you a little about my shopping style, I am an impulsive buyer, especially for clothes. I don't buy clothes usually, but when I do I do it in bulk. And I decided to buy 9 of them that day. 

So it's 4 in the afternoon when I return back with 2 big shopping bags and one badminton gear bag, with zero energy left in my body. The lack of sleep was clearly amplified by the exhaustion. I just needed to hit the bed, and I would be asleep in the next minute. And that's what I actually did, despite trying to resist it with all my efforts. 

A call from courier services broke my sleep at 4:30, and I had to get up with bad back pain.

If I had to make up for the event, I had to kick off all my body alarms and get ready within the next half an hour and leave for the venue.

What do you usually do on Sunday evenings, when the Monday blues already starts hitting you, you are feeling lazy sleep gently engulfing you, the energy bars signing red and your back screaming you not to get up. My head was also signaling that it was going to join the protest and give me a headache for some time.

Exactly! you take a perfect Sunday nap, and that's exactly what I decided not to do. I dressed myself up and dragged myself to my first storytelling event, which I was dreaming of going for weeks.

"Fuck up tales", was the title of the evening. Where the speakers were supposed to share one fuck tale from their life. I thought my story was the biggest fuck up that anyone could have. I told them about how my female best friend betrayed me. 

And stories that I heard stories from other speakers ranging from, how somebody who was in the professionally most successful position one could dream of being at that age, suffered from extreme existential and identity crises. How did somebody with so a charismatic, and influential personality of a celebrity, like the one you would idealize, attempt suicide just 2 days ago? How somebody who got admission to one of the best colleges in the country twice, was denied admission because of the documents mismatch both times. There was a person who tried all the therapists in the city and could recommend you the perfect one for your problem.

Hearing their problems made me realize how blessed I am in my life, and how small my life's crises were when compared to others. I now deal with all the problems in my life with an open heart and a smile on my face. I now know that somebody somewhere in the world was wishing that their life problems were as big as mine.

After I came back from the event, without anybody's complaints whatsoever, satisfied and happy I also wonder if it was actually my body giving me a breakdown alert, or if it was anxiety that was making my body behave that way. Sometimes it's important to realize fake alert signs from the body because it might be your anxiety communicating instead of your body. When I feel anything such happening, I just put a hand to my heart and say aloud "All is well".

Here are some photos from the same event.

Is there any such thing that you did in your life, that you had a hundred reasons to avoid due to your anxiety, but still ended up doing, you still ended up doing and you are now proud of yourself for doing it. Please share your stories in the comments, I would love to read them.