New Air

I don't know about you, but my moods fluctuate.

I'm not a crazy person, most days, and I find the paths of my ups and downs to be comically traceable, most days. (I tend to be more and more obvious to myself as the days get by me.)

Still, what I've never had much experience with before is this strange sense of panic. At least, that's what I'm guessing it is. It's an altogether new quality in myself that I don't much care for and frankly, due to its sudden arrival, don't know much about. How do you even begin to tackle an unfamiliar facet of yourself? For the most part, I thought that the person that I am was here to stay. That, at the ancient and wise age of twenty-four (oh HA), there wouldn't be any more surprises on my end of things. If any unprecedented obstacles came at me, I would be able to predict in an almost uncanny fashion how I would handle things, react, or carry on.

So I guess this is me being surprised and even humbled by my own unpredictable self. It's newness. And I don't like it all that much.

See, to me, panic is the opposite of what I need right now. I don't know how to freak out without wasting a lot of time. While I'm not yet scary or running around in circles or crying publicly (wait..), when I give myself more than thirty seconds to stop and consider my situation, I get a weird tension in my body, a million bad thoughts in my brain, all usually ending with me imagining myself somewhere in a trailer park, middle-aged, eating cat food (or, more appropriately, grass), and fully out of my mind.

You can see the obvious danger that this process potentially brings.

So I've decided something. The best way for me to harness these moments of losing-my-cool (which, broken down into all meanings, might be something I'm always in the process of doing) is to transform these times into something productive. Yes, I could take a nap or deep breaths or rely on some sort of substance assistance to get me through it. But after I waken or hold my air in again or sober up I'm going to find myself in the exact same circumstance. The same situation, only a little groggier, and most likely a little sloppy.

My moments of feeling terrorized or taunted by the future are usually paired with lots of list-making, even more Google searches, temporary fits and then, even more lists. These lists end up being jumbled nonsense that make sense only to me, but I find them useful. I write down things that I have yet to try, options I should look into, research on different school programs. They are essentially my hand-written way to make sure I don't leave any stone unturned. And trust me, my forest is currently undergoing a major makeover, ever boulder and pebble and tree flung to the side in search of a hidden or unrecognized option.

And if all of that still leaves me feeling a little nauseated, I break. I take a slight sidestep into whatever book I'm obsessing over, I write to a friend, positively, about what's going on with me and ask what's new with them. I think about someone else for a minute, because for all that this search has become, I am not the only person in the world struggling with this particular issue. For that matter, I am simply not the only person struggling with anything.

I meditate on such certain T.S. Eliot words such as,

For I have known them all already, known them all:-

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

The coffee spoons part is just an added irony that I happen to enjoy. J. Alfred Prufrock knows.

Anyway, the point is to figure out what works. Letting your thoughts spiral out of control and leaving you with your hands tied, of your own doing, I might add, is only going to make this harder. Let yourself find certain anxieties as merely challenging, not debilitating. After all, if you're working on it, a change is going to come, ready or not. I'm trying to stay ready.