and I hoped she would understand, and of course she gave me a big hug and then she said “what are you afraid of?” And I knew that this was it - that she would never understand, and I lied, an 8 year old managing to weave a lie so elaborate - I said “I’m afraid of giants” and my mother, just finishing her social worker degree and very into modern parenting, got me to talk about giants and make drawing of giants and make friends with the imaginary giants, this went on for weeks and weeks and slowly I was doing so much better, I was pretending to be less and less afraid and I would make up stories about nice giants and I was getting cured until she dropped the subject and I was left alone again, to harbor my fears and fall apart on the inside.
10 year later, it got so bad I couldn’t eat for over 2 weeks, my boyfriend and I were helpless, but I did tell him about it all, for once I spoke to someone for real about this, he tried to help, a scared unstable boy, 18 year old but so adult to me, he tried to calm me down, but really it was fear of nothing - how can you calm someone who fear of nothing, is everywhere, you can’t run away from nothing. After a couple of weeks it got so bad that he went and talk to my mom, explaining her what I said cause I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She gave me a valum, apparently she was having anxiety attacks over her father’s death in those same months and signed me into therapy. I had no idea how to get out of it, but at least I had a name - I wasn’t alone in this anymore, it was a well known condition which I didn’t invented, and I didn’t make up and people did live with it.
That was about 12 years ago, there are better times and worst times, therapy told me of some ways to handle it, I found some ways to handle it myself, medications didn’t really do shit for anxiety, i think it’s such a basic part of my personality, it would never go away entirely, my first childhood memory has to do with being in anxiety - looking at a round lamp shade moving and it’s light swinging on the floor and feeling like the world’s coming to an end, like something horrid beyond reason or explanation is going to happened. I have no idea how old I’ve been back then, but it was very young.