Flailing in deep water
Despite gasping for breath, there’s miraculously still air in my lungs.
Today I turn 27, sleepless with puffy eyelids. I’d already dedicated this year to Intuition, but expected the process to be more aspirational than painful. I needed a friend to remind me that when I’m emotionally immobilized like this, I’m experiencing humanity in full.
I’m truly alive and grateful to not be numb, devoid of feeling. Here’s to another year <3
My therapist told me recently that my anxiety’s gone unmanaged for so long that the volume is too loud to hear my intuition. This explains why more often than not, it sounds like I have two songs blaring in my head at the same time, one in each ear, words and melodies indistinguishable.
Like an earwormed chorus, my anxiety keeps me immobilized in my head, rolling situations and discomfort over like a rock tumbler. It’s erratic, indecisive; unable to focus on the rational fear before me because it’s already created a dozen more. My anxious lifestyle is a commitment to avoidance, trusting a faulty gauge to measure the harm of any given circumstance.
Anxiety seems to refute itself, convincing me out of one emotion and into another, leaving all stress cycles incomplete. My decision-making senses start to turn blurry, like crossing the street wearing someone else’s prescription, suddenly unsure if there’s really a sidewalk on the other side.
I falsely believed intuition to be the antithesis: the angelic voice guiding me to all life’s good things and steering me clear of harm. And because I’m not living an idyllic, painless life, I’d assumed I’d never heard it. My intuition is really a compass of truth, equally capable of directing me toward unexpected pleasure as it is insurmountable pain. It’s a nerve ending sensitive to life’s offness.
I’d been so quick to label anxiety as my irrational voice and intuition my logic; the reactive younger sibling to the older and wiser. Trying to ignore my anxious voice only creates a stronger reverberating echo of imaginative terrors while my intuition motivates me to seek relief of what scares me, confident in my strength and bravery. The two aren’t enemies after all, but perspectives, harmonizing together in an unlikely duet.
My intuition might be what the church convinced me was the Holy Spirit, harder to distinguish now in my religionless existence. Deconstructing the notion that I have to wait for God’s divine instruction has left me with an uncomfortable sense of responsibility over my own life, a concept embarrassingly new to me. Yet I surprise myself by my resilience and resistance.
I’ve pushed myself into the deep end and blamed my intuition for not teaching me how to swim, the negligent parent asleep in the yellow beach chair. Anxiety flailing, I’ve managed to tread water, albeit barely. Despite gasping for breath, there’s miraculously still air in my lungs.
"My decision-making senses start to turn blurry, like crossing the street wearing someone else’s prescription, suddenly unsure if there’s really a sidewalk on the other side." gorgeous analogy