I’ve still not quite
been able to come up with an adequate phrase to describe having
social anxiety. Sometimes the old clichés are the best, and so I go
with the duck- calmly floating above the water, but paddling like mad
beneath.
I can be so good at
hiding the furious paddling that even my closest friends have doubts
that it exists. But if I were to invite you under the water,
you’d see constant, frantic movement. You'd experience my physiological reactions going
mad for no reason, reacting to the unforeseen horror of merely having
a pleasant conversation with someone. You'd be hit with tidal waves of thoughts, rushing over and over in a jumble. You'd hear that nasty, mean little internal monologue of mine telling you what other people are thinking
(although they are probably not), how stupid you look (although you
probably don’t), how boring you are (although you’re probably
not). Then you'd feel the confusion and shame of cutting all these thoughts up with a knife of rationality. You'd see how that knife then turns on yourself because you just can't keep up with all of the mean thoughts, and you feel so weak for letting them take over you.
Eventually, this state
becomes your norm. It becomes background noise, and the peaks of it
get even higher in moments where you feel threatened. Our metaphorical duck spends his days thrashing relentlessly under the water every second of everyday, and
the tiniest of waves sends him into free-fall. Of course, Kate, you
probably know how this feels already to a degree: it is stage fright
that kept you away from touring for so long.
Moments of true calm
are few and far between when you reach this point. When they
do occur, you start worrying about them- internal silence starts
to feel alien. Constant anxiety becomes your default position, and the otherworldliness of calm feels dangerous somehow.
That’s how I was this
time last year. Things have now improved somewhat- thanks to the CBT,
thanks to those around me, and in no small part thanks to my own
stubbornness. I’m now at a point where the peaks are still there,
but they’re not quite as insurmountable. My default position is no
longer fight or flight, and I'm more able to quell the thought
onslaught. True moments of stillness are, however, still relatively
rare.
I’m never usually
able to lose myself in a moment, as this stupid anxiety makes me
constantly self-aware. The other night though, I experienced several
blissful hours of basically forgetting that I existed. All thanks to
you, Kate.
You’ve always been
able to lift me out of terrible moods. One of the joys of living on
my own is that I can get home, and crank up your music as loud as I
like. I can sing, I can let go, and I can dance about with the cat
without anyone laughing at me. I often find that you’re able to
lift me out of an approaching mist. You've been the manufacturer of
one of my most reliable coping mechanisms.
I saw Before The Dawn
the other night. I was scared of going in alone, but within minutes I
was chatting away with other people. We couldn't believe our luck.
I've honestly never seen so many utterly excited people in one place
before.
I know that everyone
else has loved it. I've read the reviews, and I've seen the tweets. I
expected it to be good, but what I didn't expect was to be completely
enraptured- with you, with the story of a woman in the water, of a
dawning day, with the detail. I had expected a couple of tears,
perhaps a couple of whoops if I was feeling brave. What I hadn't
expected was to realise that I was so taken in by it all that I was
no longer self aware. I sort of came to, whilst dancing madly away to
Cloudbusting, and realised that the waves had stopped for me for 3.5
hours. Here I was, on my own, in a situation that would usually scare
me, completely and utterly swept up in the world of your making.
Thank you, Kate. Thank
you for that gift.
Hxxx
