The Monsters Within
The Monsters Within
A girl sitting alone in the back of the library. She wears a grey hooded sweatshirt and
black jeans, black converse with the soles worn down to smooth rubber. Hood pulled up,
she rests her head on her arms. Silently, she cries, stuck forever in a tension of opposites: to
wish someone cared, but to never be caught breaking down. She worries what they’d say, if
they saw her like this. There is nothing humane about high school—an entire mini-dystopia
of bloodthirsty, judgemental predators faced against helpless, nameless prey. A group of
girls walks by, laughing. She instinctively buries her face farther into her sleeves on the
table—she can’t help but assume that they’re laughing at her. Little does she know, they
didn’t even notice her...but is that better, or worse?
Those of you who are not subject to the constant undercurrent of hysteria in
everything you do, consider yourselves lucky. Anxiety is, in my opinion, one of the most
powerful forces found in the human race. Crushing me. Suffocating me. The ability to affect
every single thing we do, to infest our every thought and emotion, to slowly unravel us until
we’re torn at the seams, is an otherworldly power to hold over the heads of so many of us.
It’s truly terrifying. Not only is it terrifying, but it’s unfair—to be exempt from the constant
and, at times, nearly paralyzing fear while the rest of us suffer.
So here I welcome you to your own little window into the life of the anxious, to
know how we suffer day in and day out while you go about your simple life without a care
in the world.
I’ll bet you didn’t know how much you affect it, did you? You walk by in your group
of friends, laughing at a joke you told. You pass me in the hall without noticing, bursting
into laughter the very moment you come near. Without even knowing, you’ve worried me.
Chances are, you didn’t even notice me. But you laughed as you went by, and without
wanting or meaning to, I assumed it was about me. Maybe my hair is a mess, or my outfit
doesn’t match. Maybe my makeup is messed up and I can’t see it. Maybe someone started a
rumour about me and I just haven’t heard it yet. The possibilities are endless, but they are all
possible, no matter how unlikely, and that’s what scares me.
To walk from one place to another feels like being bombarded with judgement from
people whom I not only don’t know, but aren’t even aware if they’re there or not. It feels
like a million eyes watching my every movement, judging every single decision I make—even
if no one is around, I worry. Always. I carefully plan out every action I take, every word out
of my mouth, for fear that what I decide to do will be seen as wrong in the eyes of others.
Others tell me, “No one is even paying attention! Don’t worry!” But what if they are? What if
they are and you don’t know it? What if they’re just waiting for me to screw up so that they
can judge, can talk about me, can deem me a spaz or a klutz or just a nobody.
To sit alone is, essentially, sanity suicide. The thoughts that come when sitting by
myself can only be described as a snowball effect. Sitting still or not having anything to
distract me is a detriment—not only do I fret over things happening right here and right
now, but I have the time to sit and consider the past, present, and future. I go through every
argument I’ve been in, every awkward conversation I’ve experienced, every mistake I’ve
made. I think about what I could’ve done differently. I go off the deep end when it comes to
thinking about what I could have done to make things better, and the results it might have
had.
You know that feeling of wishing you’d gone in for that kiss, and how that regret
sticks with you for at least a few days? (Or maybe only hours—I’ve never really experienced
getting over things in a “normal person’s” time frame.) Imagine that feeling, all over again.
Not a few days later, but right after you leave and you immediately wish you’d gone for it.
Now, multiply that feeling by ten, and apply it to every single day of your life, about wishing
you could fix every little mistake you ever made. Not too pleasant a way to live life.
Trying to sleep at night is futile. Let me paint you a picture: You get home from
running errands at 8pm. You have to be up by 6am the following day. After coming home,
cleaning up, and getting yourself ready for bed, it’s 9:30pm. You crawl into bed and get
comfy, hoping for the solid 8.5 hours you should easily be able to achieve...and then the
anxiety kicks in. You try to sleep, but your eyes open against your will, forced open by the
never-ending onslaught of “what ifs”. What if i’d worn a cuter outfit? What if I’d let her see
my notes? You run through scene after scene depicting what could have been, thinking of
the thousands of different outcomes that might’ve happened. You’ve already lost an hour
and a half of sleep without even knowing it. You get stressed; you’re going to be too tired
tomorrow! You won’t be able to get a good grade on your test. You might be too tired to
remember your locker combination. What then? Puffy coats and bookbags aren’t allowed;
you’ll be sent to the office. They’ll think you’re deliberately disregarding the school’s dress
code. They’ll call your parents, who are gonna kill you if you cause a teacher to call home.
You’re gonna be in so much trouble when you get home; they’re gonna ground you. You
won’t be able to hang out with anyone, and they’ll all get mad and think that you’re a flake!
Or maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll be glad they didn’t have to see you this weekend; they
get more than enough opportunities to deal with you during the school week.
And you’ve lost another hour.
The thoughts turn self-destructive, not physically, but mentally. Do your friends
really even like you? Even if they do, they shouldn’t. You’re annoying, overbearing, and
awkward; you’re not funny and you suck at telling stories; people are probably intentionally
avoiding you and you don’t even know it. Yet. No wonder nobody ever hits you up to try
and hang out. Who would want to be anywhere near responsible for such a train wreck of a
human being? No one.You’re a burden. You talk way too much. No wonder you’re home
every weekend; nobody wants you around.
You finally exhaust yourself into a fitful sleep. The never-ending turmoil in your mind
stirs up horrible dreams—gross exaggerations of the past, terrifying conjectures for the
future. You waltz in and out of a fitful, unsatisfactory sleep, never able to remember the
dreams when you wake but stuck in a confused, hazy terror, only to fade back into that
awful world of twisted truths. You toss and turn, wake up freezing despite the blankets you
have swaddled yourself in, catch a glimpse of your arms and neck in your bedroom mirror to
find you’ve been dragging your nails across your skin.
You’re mostly awake when your alarm goes off, signaling you to “rise and shine”, but
your so dazed, lost in your own head yet again, that you bolt upright at the sound. Your
night of horror is over, but you’ve totaled less than three hours of sleep. Have you ever seen
those memes depicting what it feels like to be awake for hours at night overthinking
something you did years and years ago? Entertaining as they may be, they’re painfully
accurate—it’s a ceaseless nightmare through wakefulness and slumber both.
Not only is anxiety emotionally exhausting, but physically taxing. To only get a few
hours’ sleep each night and still try to lead a normal and fully functional lifestyle is too much
to ask of anyone.
More often than you’d expect, people severely underestimate the cause and effect
of anxiety. They say we’re being melodramatic, simply trying to call attention to ourselves.
They don’t get it. The simplest of things can trigger an anxiety attack, even nothing at all.
Having anxiety can easily be confused for ADHD, because we constantly feel the need to
find something to keep us distracted in order to not wander deeper yet into the terrifying
depths of our consciousness. In truth, though, it’s the opposite of an attention disorder:
We’re not succumbing to the urge to do something; we’re desperately searching for
anything to keep the monsters in our heads at bay.
There are more triggers to an attack than there are hours to count them, at least for
myself. Starting from the bottom and working our way up in intensity, some panic attacks
arise from literally nothing, as previously stated. Sometimes it’s from things that are actually
irrelevant to me, such as a group of friends laughing at an unheard joke, or the concern of
how my outfit looks on me. Sometimes it’s being called out in class, or having the guidance
office request my presence, or thinking one of my friends might be upset with me without
me knowing it. Sometimes I get too deep in my own thoughts, and I worry about school
shootings and asteroids and fires and storms and viruses and earthquakes—things that are
incredibly unlikely, but remotely possible, and if it’s possible then it’s worth worrying about.
More often than not, there is no immediate fix as to how to calm down from an
anxiety attack. You just have to let it blow over, and do your best to recover what you can
from the wreckage. Deep breaths and closing your eyes isn’t actually as effective as you
might think (though maybe only in my case)—deep breaths make me feel like I’m drowning
and closing my eyes simply helps me visualise whatever triggered the anxiety attack in the
first place. Sometimes the best way to calm down is a good cry. Cliché, I know, but effective
nonetheless. Removing myself from the situation, isolating myself, and crying—maybe a
slightly unhealthy solution, but helpful. But anxiety comes with only one rule: when
somebody is panicking, never tell them to calm down. That’s like telling somebody with
depression to “just cheer up”, somebody with anorexia to “just eat”, somebody with
dysmorphia that they “look fine”.
So yes, dear reader, you may not have been cursed with the constant worry that is
my life, but you fool yourself if you think that means you hold any type of superiority over
me. While you may go through your life more relaxed, you are unaware. You turn your nose
up to any form of precaution in favour of a good time. When you’re body turns up in a
massive accident at some thrill-seeker’s paradise because you disregarded all warning signs
pointing you in the opposite direction, I’ll be sitting on my couch, watching your obituary
become the topic of hometown news stations, knowing full well that my anxiety is the
reason that I am alive, and you are not.