Letting Go of My Anxiety

I've had a lot of time to think lately about the kind of life that I want to have. And yesterday, I realized something: my past no longer has to dictate my life. As cliché as it sounds, hindsight really is 20-20 and now that my eyes have been opened to how toxic my ways of thinking were to myself, I can't go back. As someone that has consistently struggled with anxiety, I've realized how much of it is unnecessary. The ridiculous, often unachievable, standards to which I live my life and the absolute crippling fear of the world that I've always had don't need to follow me into the future. I can leave them in the past, where they belong.

Now, I know it's not as simple as that. It's easier said than done but that doesn't make it impossible. I have been working on myself and educating myself about how to improve my ways of thinking. It's been a lot of hard work and has involved a lot of in-depth self-reflection. And it's been incredibly informative. When I think about why I am the way I am or why I think the way I do, I can now trace it back to specific events or certain people that helped shape my life. And if I'm honest, although I'm proud of the overall person that I've become, I'm far from who I want to be. But now that I've started the process, there is no going back, only moving forward.

I never knew how fast time could go until I became a mother. It feels like I blink and another month has gone by. The days all go by and fade into each other until I can't believe how much time has past. And that has shown me just how short life really is. I don't want to waste any more of my life holding onto toxic traits or feeling as if I deserve less than what I do. I want to live life to the fullest and have no regrets.

But I know that in this process, I'll lose people in my life, whether they're friends or family. In fact, I already have. But I can't focus on that. If those people don't want to embrace, a stronger, more mentally healthy person, then I don't want them in my life anyway. Too often, I've been afraid to stand up to people, have put myself down for the sake of another person or let other people manipulate me because of my anxiety. But not anymore. I've always felt crippled by my anxiety and when it's controlled by another person, I'm not just a prisoner in my own mind; I'm a prisoner in theirs, too. It was never okay. That way of life was never good enough. But I lived it.

And now I'm realizing more than ever that I can't please everyone. I can't be perfect. Everyone isn't going to like me. Not everyone is going to like my work. Sometimes you have to tell people things that they don't want to hear and vice versa. Bad things happen in life and there's nothing I can do about it. All of these thoughts have constantly haunted me until my anxiety spun them so far out of control that I became immobilized by worries that probably wouldn't happen. Uncertainty and fear were my greatest enemies and my anxiety's biggest allies.

I'm not saying that I can flip a switch and immediately become a better person. But what I can tell you is that lately, I've felt more powerful and more myself than I ever have in my life. I'm becoming someone that I can truly be proud of. And I won't rest until I no longer describe myself as an anxious person and the word "anxiety" is erased from my vocabulary, no matter how long it takes.

-Chelsea