like a phoenix

Hey there; it’s been a while. One could say that it’s been a hell of a time since I last wrote something here. Just to play catch up for a minute, in the past six months, I got on Lexapro, went to DC, went to New York City, got in touch with my Judaism again, came home to an offer luring me back into the vocation of restaurant management that I had previously sworn off, got off Lexapro, lost touch with most of my friends, got on Wellbutrin, started talking to my mom again, went through an immense personal crisis regarding firing ghosting my therapist and struggling to navigate my personality in the light of the medication changes, got transferred to my old stomping grounds (as a manager this time), learned a lot about personal finance the hard way, went to Boston, went to Maine, and-most importantly-got engaged. In the midst of all of this, I lost all motivation to write. Watching my website collect dust has been tough on me since I worked really hard to establish writing regularly into my routine only to see it fall to the wayside for the umpteenth time in my life. But now, for reasons that I still don’t fully grasp, I’m finishing an exhausting Mother’s Day by sitting on my couch and writing on a whim.

In a previous post, I wrote this:
“Truth be told, I’ve actually written three articles to damn-near completion since my last post, but the chatter in my head has repeatedly shut down my efforts to take them to the point of posting until I just gave up at some point. Unfortunately, I’m really no stranger to this. Most of y’all probably don’t know this (and I’m cringing a little at the thought of there being anyone who does), but this is actually my fifth attempt at a consistent blog. I’ve tried to do this sort of thing many times and, without fail, life always gets in the way of my writing and creativity so I end up throwing in the towel time and time again. It wasn’t until this week that, when reflecting upon the disappointment I’ve been feeling about leaving my beloved blog to see no new activity, that it ever occurred to me that “life getting in the way” was likely not my primary issue in keeping any sort of consistency with this hobby of mine.”

If you haven’t yet ascertained that I maintain a less-than-subtle proclivity to start and stop writing in the pockets created by the ebbs and flows of my life by now, this post may not be for you. I wrote that exactly eight months ago, but it feels like I could have written it today. Though the sentiment remains the same, I find myself at odds with what was said if only for a lack of nuance (more accurately a refusal to dig deeper). I’ve now psychoanalyzed myself with sufficient thoroughness and with enough assistance from antidepressants to identify a more prevalent issue with my desire to make my voice heard through this medium:

I have to stop using writing as a crutch to lean on when I’m feeling insecure about my life in some capacity. I could point to several instances in which I began writing because I wanted to create a path for myself leading out of restaurant work or to receive the attention and validation of strangers that I so desperately desired because of an insecurity relating to a relationship or feeling of listlessness to reinforce this realization, but none of that would prove my clarity of mind on this subject the way that the last six months have. If there was ever a time in my life when the cacophony of instability relating to my career, my finances, my relationship, and my life as a whole would translate to my fingers clattering against a keyboard, this would have been it.

But instead, I made myself stop. I could feel myself struggling to articulate myself. I could feel myself grasping a little bit harder for something to fill my self-imposed weekly quota with. I could feel myself trying to be something I wasn’t and, instead of taking an ax to my budding body of work, I let it rest. Today happens to be the day when I wipe the crust out of my eyes and rise from hibernation, but with a vastly different intention this time around and I’m not planning on losing sight of who I’m doing this for.

So what’s next for the blog?

Whatever I want.

blog RSS

anxiety & all his friends

As I type this, I’m starting to finally come off a 24-hour-long anxiety bender that served as what I can only hope was the peak of a month of paranoia, sadness, and anger that came about as a result of stress. I’m not sure what triggered my near-meltdown state or if it was triggered by anything. The only thing that I’m certain of is that this isn't the first time and that it won’t be the last time I face anxiety of nightmarish proportions for what feels like no reason and seemingly everything all at once at the same time. Even now that I’m no longer so deeply entrenched in my own anxious, paranoid ideations, I still feel a subtle sweat on my brow, I can still feel my hands shaking, and I know that I’m just a few of the wrong words with a fellow human being away from being a sobbing mess.

Oh hello there, dear reader. It’s been longer than usual since you’ve heard from me. This one is going to be less fun and flirty than the usual content because I need to get some shit off of my chest. If you’re one of the few people who actually got used to me posting weekly and were disappointed at my little sabbatical, my apologies to you are sincere.

Truth be told, I’ve actually written three articles to damn-near completion since my last post, but the chatter in my head has repeatedly shut down my efforts to take them to the point of posting until I just gave up at some point. Unfortunately, I’m really no stranger to this. Most of y’all probably don’t know this (and I’m cringing a little at the thought of there being anyone who does), but this is actually my fifth attempt at a consistent blog. I’ve tried to do this sort of thing many times and, without fail, life always gets in the way of my writing and creativity so I end up throwing in the towel time and time again. It wasn’t until this week that, when reflecting upon the disappointment I’ve been feeling about leaving my beloved blog to see no new activity, that it ever occurred to me that “life getting in the way” was likely not my primary issue in keeping any sort of consistency with this hobby of mine.

Were it only that simple and vague. To be fully transparent, my greatest fear and the voice in my head have the same name: inadequacy. Inadequacy haunts me at every conceivable opportunity. I am constantly followed by some paranoia of either not being good enough at whatever task I’m engaging with at that moment to merit any sort of reward or advancement with it, or of letting the treasure I’ve reaped from my efforts slip through my fingers. This has manifested itself in countless ways throughout my life. In my lowest moments, I have the warm trickle of tears rolling down my cheeks, while I try my damndest to squeeze the blood out of my paling hands after some menial social interaction. My inner voice will tell me that I wasn’t good enough, funny enough, smart enough, or quick-witted enough to be the person that I feel like I either should be, or am expected to be by others. This cowardice and insecurity that invades my bloodstream keeps my ventricles full of self-doubt and dissatisfaction as the primary agents of my ever-quickening pulse. And for what? Because I have some bloated expectation for myself about what the primary factors of my identity should be? Because I think other people care more about the idiosyncrasies of my personality more than they would ever have any reason to?

I’m regularly left to contend with this internal debate after some delusion-induced panic attack and I think that after all of this time, I have to just admit that it doesn’t fucking matter why this happens so much as it matters that I’m willing to and attempting to do something to mitigate it. A twenty-one year old Alexander once stood in a dumpster corral behind the Jack Allen’s Kitchen in Round Rock mid-Saturday double shift and shared a cigarette with a wise co-worker of mine who, in an attempt to assuage the misgivings I was having about accepting my chemical imbalance to be what it was, told me something that I’ll never forget: “you never cure depression; you just learn to manage it.” Tragically for twenty-eight year old Alexander, twenty-one year old Alexander took that advice and ran with it just to later look back and regret that I walked away from that conversation thinking that depression was something that you managed, but that anxiety was just a part of being an adult that never went away or saw any sort of significant relief. 

See, I’m sure that I’m not the only person my age that can relate to the memory of having parents that were too stressed about every facet of their lives to leave their children with any impressionable aspect of their personality that wasn’t superseded by stress-induced anger and sadness. Hell, a lot of our parents probably (definitely) need therapy and an anxiety disorder diagnosis, but the Gen X’ers and those who preceded them weren’t exactly known for their trust in clinical psychology as a vocation much less as a scientific practice. As with anything, we learn about the world as children through the lens of the world that our parents/guardians curated for us. Not to be an armchair psychologist, but seeing my father stress-cleaning instead of going to a friend’s wedding as an anxiety response to professional trouble couldn’t have possibly instilled any sort of value about effective and/or healthy stress management to me. The thing about my mother and father’s never-ending professional woes and how I took a front-row seat to them at way-too-young years old is that, as an adult, I can appreciate that aspect of adult stress as normal and damn-near inescapable. The problem that presents itself in juxtaposition to his, however, is that I’m routinely forced to put into perspective because of these sorts of memories how abnormal my constant low-hum of anxiety about everything else is. I’m twenty-eight so I’m not particularly inclined to have my career and professional life completely figured out at this juncture, but shouldn’t I have figured out how to drive to work and listen to music for fifteen minutes a few times a week without crying? How have I internalized this sort of anxiety as normal this entire time?

I think a lot of the relief that I experience in terms of having to reckon with my emotional ineptitude comes from the validation I get from others for performing well as an emotionally stable person and the way that I’ve manipulated my own behaviors and demeanor in order to pivot myself to receive said validation as frequently as possible. Nine out of ten people who know me will read this admission and be shocked that there was such a powder-keg of sadness and emotional volatility underneath my extrovert-presenting shell. At very least, I have to believe that they can’t see through me that easily because if anyone ever figured out that there’s a difference between me being an open-book, emotions on my sleeve sort of guy and the entirety of my personality being a character to mask the truth of my mental state, I wouldn’t be able to function around them without pining for their validation.

As someone who just read back through my work thus far on this page and gathered the same thing you did, let me just say: I agree: that was a lot. How much of my self-depricating musings are real and how much of that is inadequacy telling me that I’m too fundamentally flawed to have earmed the love of others being my authentic self? That train of thought doggedly leads to the suggestion that I must be liked for being someone that I’m not rather than who I authentically am and, at some point, I have to admit to myself that that’s no way to live.

I’m fairly satisfied to not dive any deeper into further detail about my anxiety and deteriorating mental state but rather to instead circle around to the obligatory silver-lining required after vomiting up a healthier dose of emotional honesty than any of my last four therapists have gotten out of me. The point is that I’m done with writing off my diagnosed anxiety as just routine necessary evils that are my prize for creeping up on thirty. I want to change. I want to stop sobbing because I’m afraid of my loved-ones dying. I want to stop self-sabotaging because I’m afraid that the affection I garner from my partner is unearned. I want to stop playing through relatively irrelevant conversations in my head because I’m upset with myself for not responding differently in the moment. I want to feel like I am enough. I want to accept my flawed nature as a side-effect of the human condition. I want to change even if that means I’ll present differently than the way I’ve accepted as being “the right way”. I want to look for another therapist and maybe take a pill that will make me feel like I don’t need to keep bleeding to be good enough.

There’s a freedom in admitting that I deserve better than the treatment I’ve given myself. Sometimes it’s not enough to be good; sometimes it’s even better to be good enough.

blog RSS