Remove This Cup From Me
I have dealt with anxiety for as long as I can remember. It's a voice in my head that says, things will go wrong and it'll all be your fault. Things rarely do. An issue that seems so complicated resolves itself in a matter of weeks. Missing keys and cats and dreams are found. Friendships are mended and gripes are forgotten. Water rushes under this bridge every year. I watch bubbles and baubles disappear before I can breathe.
All my problems are insurmountable. Each of them catastrophic. My nerves know no difference between a stain on my shirt, a job interview, police surveillance, and learning that my brother has done something so terrible. My life is a constant series of doomsdays: aborted, theoretical, yet somehow, despite my knowing better, I revert to expecting the worst.
My anxiety is a more damning paralytic than my depression, unkind and with claws to clutch me by the neck.
Lately, I've developed an intense fear of anything related to my family. Not out of lack of love, to be clear, but an abundance of, and the guilt that comes with being unable to express that love, to turn it into something tangible they can appreciate without compromising my own carefully curated life. Threaten me with a message from my parents or siblings and I start to unravel. What is it this time? Often, they miss me, I should come home - my presence is so valuable to them and it's the one thing I cannot give.
Sometimes, it's bad news. Learning nothing from experience, my chest tightens, my heart quickens, and the cold from nowhere embraces my bones.
My last message to my mother: I love you, but this is too much for me to handle. I need to focus on my work and the life I'm building for my own.
Her last message to me: I'm sorry, nak. Take care always, okay?
I may not identify as a man, but I'll always be the ungrateful son.
During the Holy Week break last week, I ran a D&D one-shot inspired by the Catholic themes of belief and self-sacrifice. The party ran a gauntlet of trials based on the Passion of Christ, and in the end, with nothing more to lose, gave themselves up for a village they barely knew, for people who barely deserved it.
I've always been fascinated with the image of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, ever since I read Luke back in Sunday School. I thought it evokes self-sacrifice more than Golgotha.
Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done ... And being in agony, He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground
He was on his knees, alone and in pain, imploring a parent who had already made up their mind, surrounded by friends who understood nothing of his plight. They may have proved he was made of flesh on the cross but he was the most human, the most relatable in the garden. How often have we prayed to be saved from our own circumstances, despite our godlessness, despite the overwhelming silence of the universe?
I imagine the disappointed look of my father when my mother tells him that I offered no support in response to their pain, and worse, that I asked to be divorced from it. He has not messaged me at all. The last time we spoke on the phone, I told him I love him. He didn't say I love you back. Maybe I didn't say it loud enough.
I wish my anxiety would leave me once and for all. I wish it would stop saying: You've survived this long. Surely the end of the world is right around the corner. Let it come! I'm tired.
Alice:
I give myself very good advice but I very seldom follow it.
E. C. Samar:
The one who made us is the only one capable of ruining us.
Side-quests Accomplished
🗡️ Met with the book club in QC last weekend
Today's Stat Block
STR: +1 Started an exercise routine, here's to sticking to it this time
DEX: 0
CON: 0
INT: 0
WIS: -1 Too much psychic damage from anxiety over things I cannot control
CHA: -1 Is it just me or is my hairstyle getting worse every year?