Facilitating dialogue to promote open and multi-faceted discussion and awareness

I breezed quickly down the cobblestone path, as if running away from some huge, unconquerable beast. My chest tightened and I tried to take another failed deep breath, so aware of my faults. The steps that I took didn’t come close to matching the chaotic beats of my heart, pumping blood yet lacking in oxygen—I wasn’t breathing at all now. I wanted to faint, die, anything to stop the panic that was within me. After a teary phone call with my mother, she begged me to get help. So, I did. This is the story of my battle with anxiety.

As an early adolescent, I was severely afraid of death. Aside from my fear of my own death, I was equally as terrified of losing someone that I loved. The panic consumed my life, extending into my college career; moving away from home had an unfortunate blossoming affect.  My counselor labeled my struggle as a general anxiety disorder that required weekly counseling and daily awareness. During my counseling sessions, I began to notice the woman looking at me with narrow, concerned eyes. She asked questions and I answered them while I cried and wiped my own tears with the used, crumpled tissue I held in my hand.

“Leasha, what are you scared of?” Allison, the counselor, asked as I cried.

“I’m…I’m scared of dying. I’m scared of my family dying. If they die… It’s not quite as hard when I am away at school, but when I’m at home I feel like I have to go everywhere with them because if I don’t, they might get into a car crash and…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Instead, I began to sob. Allison’s concerned eyes looked at me again, and then she looked down and scribbled something on her legal pad.

“What about the other things you talked about last time, about your work and numbers? How is that this week?”

She was talking about this horrible habit I had. My boss gave me this mailing assignment, and included in the packet was a piece of paper with the receiver’s Social Security Number. During the mailing process, I had to verify that the student’s name and SSN on the paper matched with what was in our data system. Well, all of that alone seemed fine, except that my obsessive compulsive nature would get paranoid and insist that I check the names and numbers at least five times before sealing the envelope to be mailed. Not only did this lower my productivity, but it drove me so crazy that one time I had to leave work because I felt so unwell.

“Eh…it’s fine. I am almost done with the mailing and try not to think about screwing stuff up…” I had stopped crying at this point, but now my nose was clogged and I felt drained. Allison crossed her legs and continued to look at me with her big, blue eyes. Blue eyes have always been alluring to me; the people that had them always seemed pure. I wasn’t normally this vulnerable, but I knew that I could trust her.

“Leasha, I need you to think about something for a minute, and then we’ll call it a day. What is the worst thing that would happen if you sent the wrong paper to someone, and it got into the wrong hands?” I thought about this for a moment, as she had asked. It had never occurred to me to think about it that way. I had always jumped directly to the fact that I was making a mistake, and that mistakes were very bad (especially when they were dealing with Social Security Numbers).

“Well, uh. I guess someone’s identity would get stolen, they would be very angry, trace it back to me, and I would lose my job.” I took in a deep breath after I spoke the words, feeling the tightness in my chest subsiding slightly. “I guess that isn’t horrible. I wouldn’t be dead.”

“Right. So, try to think of things that way. Most of the time, even the worst possible thing isn’t going to end your life. I’ll see you next week, Leasha.” Allison gave me a smile and I exited her office with my newfound revelation. Maybe there was more to my life than anticipating death after all.

My sessions seemed to go pretty well each week, with less tears shed each time. Allison became like a friend to me, although I knew nothing about her. There was this new sense of openness that I felt not just in my sessions, but in the rest of my life. For the first time in years, I could breathe. Allison suggested that I get into the habit of doing something that I love, something that was just for me. I discovered that “thing” was taking daily walks outside to relax. Taking my “nature walks” did more for me than I ever thought it would. It didn’t just relax my anxious nerves, it awakened my spirit. I began to notice things about the world that I couldn’t have when I was wrapped up in my own anxiety and fear. In retrospect, those walks were when I began to truly live for the first time.

Several years after I began my walks, I met a group of people that now remind me of Allen Ginsberg’s “subterraneans,” people who live in communal groups as friends, subversive in beliefs and dissatisfied with the status quo, the system, and the current state of the American government. I can remember running into my new friends at the local coffee shop and wondering how they had gotten there. We walked, was the reply. I was confused—these people had perfectly good cars but had walked for miles because it was “good exercise?” How little I knew.

After thinking about this and other occurrences, I surmised to take a long walk of my own without deciding on a location. I had never walked any considerable distance by myself, but with my then current habit of trying new things I decided to give it a go. I began my little journey by looking up and seeing a canopy of trees filled with various shades of green and tinges of yellow. Closer to the ground I saw a brown cat knock over a garbage can lid beside a brown, brick house that I had never seen before. I’d driven down this road hundreds of times over the past few years, but I had never noticed this house. It occurred to me that there were probably many things that I missed. At this point I felt like I truly was on an adventure. A journey.

The next thing I knew, I was turning the corner to a huge lake, one that I knew to be roughly three miles around. It was a bit cold and windy that day, but that didn’t stop the joggers and bikers from doing their afternoon exercising. I passed by an older couple walking together, and silently hoped that if I ever got married that my husband and I would be close enough to wake up and go for a Saturday morning walk. Then I began thinking of everything that I had been through within myself, and realized something on my little journey that would change my life forever:

Some might say that I have reason to label myself as “in repair,” waiting for someone or something to come fix me. Someone like Allison, or my mother, or a man. But that approach hinders and binds, it puts a contingency on health and happiness. No. I’m not in repair, I’m on a journey. A journey that has ups, downs, and times where absolutely nothing happens. My journey has hills, enjoyable people, and irritating ones, too. It’s exciting and it’s boring, but this journey is slowly molding me into the person that I want to be for myself and, most of all, for the people that I love. At this realization, I took the deepest, fullest breath that I could manage and kept on trekking.