Journal XIII: Anxiety; or, Honesty
The Writer is Existing
These entries were written during a period of high anxiety.
02 December 2024
I do not have anxiety attacks the way I used to.
I had one this year.
Before that, I had one in early 2022. They were not uncommon before then.
The worst I recall happened in 2018 while attending a house party with my best friend. I remember them talking to me where they found me: confined in the car, hiding. I remember explaining that I doubted I had anxiety. I was crying. Another friend was outside the car, also concerned about me. My best friend assured me they were certain I had anxiety.
I have never been medicated for it. This year was the first time I have spoken to a therapist about it—or anything. She did not have much to say that I hadn’t heard before. This gave me some relief. She was a kind therapist.
In early 2022, the attack I had was memorable because it happened in the middle of an argument with a former partner. I ended up on the floor in the kitchen of our small apartment, crying again. I think my partner did not have the mental space or grace in the moment to recognize where I was that evening. The event had a significant personal impact on our relationship and friendship and I think about it often.
Anxiety is difficult because it is delusional. My anxiety is delusional. It conjures a fantastic nightmare. It used to be ineffable; now, it just saddens me. I breathe, sleep, eat, go for a walk. These are forms of meditation. They do help. They do not erase the fallout of past anxieties. They do not anticipate anxieties of the future. Of course they don’t. The whole power of anxiety lies in its relationship with the future.
For the past week, my best friend has been upset with me. I am not sure why. They won’t talk to me honestly about it. This causes me anxiety. By all counts, I should be much more upset with them than they are with me. But, I do not process upset the same. I am a slow chess player. Sometimes, I am not even there. This is unhelpful to everyone.
Anxiety is undoubtedly a survival function, useful as an evolutionary component. But what is threatened in me that provokes my anxiety? At that house party in 2018, I felt like a fish out of water. Perhaps I did not have the social skills or I simply did not like the rowdiness of the humans there. What did I fear? Being seen, perhaps. Not being seen. Being forgotten by friends who were caught up in festivity while I panicked. The burden of the night, and wondering when we may leave. Fearing to burden others’ fun with my distinct lack of it. My best friend was good to me that evening; they were good with my anxiety. The first time we ever sat for coffee together, my hands were shaking. I had been eager to meet them and my nerves showed. They placed their hands on mine and assured me that I was safe with them.
They were present for my anxiety attack this year also.
I have tried to be present for others in their anxiety. I used to be more successful in this than I have been lately.
In early 2022, I was trying to survive a gulf of difference between my partner and I. My anxiety attack then came out of a circular argument that plummeted suddenly into a level of intensity I cannot match in others—not because I am incapable, but irreverent. Anger is hampering, the grey eminence of insecurity. We may consider it, but ought never speak from rage. Late-2021 to mid-2022 was an emotionally abusive time. My partner’s feelings were valid even when her speech was unkind. She was upset at feelings and opinions my parents had expressed about her to me. I had shared them with her because she was my partner and I was serious about our relationship. My family’s inability to accept her weighed heavy on me. It weighed heavy on us both. Their opinions and behaviour were also informed by anger, and that did not help matters at all. I was willing to dismiss them entirely—unhelpful to both parties.
The night of my anxiety attack, I tried to listen to her but I couldn’t extend my world to hers. Neither of us could yield to the other’s perception. It was horrible. I don’t know what we were trying to survive that night. I had just moved out of my community of twenty-five years in an exodus on poor terms, my father even delivering a prodigal son speech. My mother would not speak to me. My siblings were bereft. My partner was in her survival mode. I was—I left. I don’t know what I was trying to survive. There is space where I am not, for a while.
Earlier this year, I had a panic attack over a situation my best friend has become embroiled in. The situation is concerning to me. It triggered me. My response to the ordeal was inappropriate and insecure. I was not in a good place when this happened, but that is hardly an excuse. I was afraid they would get hurt and I ended up hurting us both in that fear. Still, their reception to my concern and their behaviour throughout the conflict has done as much harm. As further transgressions have transpired between us, I have felt emotionally abused: dismissed and exploited. I am sure they may feel the same. I think our struggle has continued to reveal our philosophical differences. I am trying to temper my anxiety over it: the fear of losing them. I miss the days when we could easily lay a hand over each other’s quaking fingers.
It’s alright. I’m here.
My anxiety is only important to me in the moments when it causes such a fervour that I cannot ignore it. After the highs and lows, I feel nothing for it but remorse and understanding. My anxiety has often plucked me not only from my principles and stability, but also from my loved ones. It is a cruel teacher that revisits me periodically and recalls to me that I am something that once required survival and that I don’t know what that looks like anymore.
This year, I attended a Glorious Party that encompassed an entire property—far more than a mere house. I was anxious, yeah—I hardly knew anyone. I was able to ground myself, anchoring to tripping friends and my brother and the stars and the gardens. It was a wonderful night. Sometimes, when I am in rowdy warm places with other people, I still feel like a fish, flailing on the periphery of the music and the scent of moving bodies. When I feel this way, I move among the rest and let my survival dissipate into the beat. It does not ease my anxiety, but it compels me to ignore it.
My ex-partner and I talked once or twice during our relationship about that night in 2022, but I never felt understood by her when we did. Now, we don’t talk much because her new partner doesn’t feel comfortable with her talking to me. Several in my life have expressed outrage on my behalf for this perceived slight. I don’t care. It’s not my business. That it is unfair is evident enough. I need not feel or say anything about it: it stands for itself. Still, I wish we could talk sometimes. I miss her friendship. She’s a good friend.
Sometimes, we just don’t know how to behave.
My best friend and I have talked regularly this year about what happened between us but we can’t seem to find relief. I think they are caught up in the world they currently occupy, and they can’t see the shape of mine. I think I do see them. I think I just don’t care to enter their world right now, and so they think that I cannot see them because I will not concede to their worldview. Philosophical differences—meaningless but for the meaning we extract from their contradiction. I hope we are able to work it out. Long-distance relationships of any kind are brutal. It is difficult when you cannot hug your best friend and say, “No, I love you. I support you. I want your philosophy to be as passionate as mine so I can be challenged by your world: I do not want to be blinded by my own. I do not want to live here alone. I want to visit you forever, just not today. I love you.”
Anxiety is survival. But we are not trying to survive anymore. More and more, I have been able to overcome anxiety because I recognize that it does not serve the animal in me anymore. It serves a human. I am more than the human in me; I am an animal, also. Anxiety hurts the animal. Survival now dictates I work to overcome anxiety but temperance is most difficult to practice when one feels threatened by illusions. You cannot verify an illusion. When I said to my former partner, “They are wrong and you needn’t care,” it is not helpful because what if they aren’t wrong—she does care. I cannot gift another my perception. I feel it is acceptable to ignore the opinions of others or to let some walk over you in order to let them pass. That is not easy for others, especially when their survival is threatened.
I remain anxious but am not often unravelled by my illusions now. I am honest with myself about them. These days, my anxiety blooms from my inability to contend with others’ illusions. I do not like to be oppressed by what isn’t. I would rather argue about things that matter than be berated for opinions that don’t matter at all. I would rather focus on what is true than what may or may not be false. I would rather make a bid for survival on the basis of what is. This invites hypocrisy, but there is a resolution possible in contradiction that will bring hypocrisy into self-understanding. Amidst this, my anxiety is a compromised immune system that makes illness seem worse. Anxiety engages me in doubt—which is good—but then tries to drown me there.
I am not surviving off my anxiety as intended. It has been the greatest threat to my mortality. I try to be patient. I listen. I try to refrain from acting on anxiety. It does not serve my best interests. I compel instruction and learn the difference between use and error. I let go of illusions, others’ opinions, my own opinions, the past, the future, and even today. Anxiety happens in the present moment, too. I overcome it by returning to who I am when I am nothing. The space in my head where I feel as large as a tree and as useful as mud after rain. Anxiety dissipates in the beat of the world’s overwhelming and effortless effort to continue. When I am there, I know it is just an old animal’s survival instinct gone awry. It does not understand the complexities of the modern animal’s life. Why should it? It’s a child.
I will exercise patience, humility, and doubt.
Then, the child will be safe again. My anxiety is never gone, but our relationship changes.
04 December 2024
My relationship with my best friend is falling apart. They are upset with me for confiding in my youngest sister some things they have done this year that affected me emotionally and caused me concern as a friend. They are upset with me for lying about this despite the opportunity to be honest before last night when I admitted my dishonesty. I am upset with them for how they have treated me and others this year. I am upset with them for lying to others and to me. I am anxious because I think everyone will presume I am the problem, that I couldn’t get over old emotions or that I was intense and uncomfortable to them. This wouldn’t be true, though. I feel exploited this year for the care and love I have for them. Now, I am anxious.
They told me last night that they would be nervous to have me visit because of how they remember my anxiety in social groups when we were younger. They said they knew it was unfair to me and that they were holding on to the past. Then, I was honest about things I had been going through. Now, we aren’t speaking. The sad prophecy of my discourse in the entry above is not lost on me.
This year has been difficult. Moments after the conversation that tore the rug from under us, my former partner messaged me: “Hey, hope you are doing well.” I am not. I am separating wheat and chaff but both are golden to me. It hurts to love everything but feel like you cannot be effective or productive in that love. It hurts to write about lofty things but struggle with them in practice. I feel like a hypocrite. I feel anxious. I feel my survival is threatened. I lie when I am afraid, but I should not have felt the need to lie about confiding in my little sister that I was concerned and felt emotionally desolate. That is the kind of thing you discuss with those you trust. I trust my little sister despite the times my little sister has been untrustworthy. That’s love: acceptance, patience, and grace. Lying about it was not love, just fear: the need to survive.
I will not hide from myself. I think the effort to hide from ourselves and others is what drives much of our conflict. I am accountable. I am overcoming what I am not. The things that have happened to me this year that have truncated my wisdom and overrun my boundaries are not unwelcome. They are not welcome, either. They’re just skipping stones coming to rest. I will let the mud settle.
It is the best thing for anxiety: to let the mud settle. I have never been medicated. I have been to therapy for the first time this year, and I found it to be exactly how I expected. I know people with anxiety so awful they cannot leave their homes. I know people with anxiety that causes them to tear their flesh apart. I know people with anxiety that turns them selfish. My anxiety blinds me, compels me to lie to the people I love, prevents me from engaging in human experience, imperils my survival. What is to be done about such a thing?
I will get over this. I will meet my anxiety in a meadow and offer it companionship and a place to sleep. I will put these things to rest. The whole of my lived experience recalls a line in Robin Kirkpatrick’s translation of The Divine Comedy:
“He comes to see what you are suffering here.”
— Inferno, xii.21
Later,
My therapist had told me several months ago that it might be a good practice to sit a version of myself or the person I need to confront in an empty chair and to have a conversation with them (the empty chair). I have done this. It is mildly cathartic.
Three Poems from the Kitchen Floor
Definitions: A Brief Study in Anxiety
Adulthood: The things we say matter now.
Safety: I am not.
Contemplation: What?
Unbearable:
This is not who I am: No.
Manipulation: Really?
Abuse: The denial of abuse.
Honest Inquiries: A Cross-Examination
Have I been abusive? Yes.
Have you been abusive? Yes.
Is this too much? I am humble.
Did I sabotage this? No. Bad things happen. Things fall apart.
Is it them? No.
Why was it so hard to talk? Have you ever been abused like that before?
Are my feelings invalid because I couldn’t talk about them? No.
What do I do? Do nothing.
What do I do? Write.
I’m not okay? That’s okay.
I’m not okay? Breathe.
I’m not okay?
Call & Response: Following an Anxious Message, I Sit You Down
If you felt abused this year, you should have said so. I tried. It isn’t always easy to confront your abuser.
Once again, you have withheld how you actually feel. Yeah, sharing the emotions I’m feeling hasn’t been safe these past few years.
How the hell is that a safe environment? Because sharing the emotions I’m feeling hasn’t been safe these past few years.
You cannot be friends with someone if you don’t have the courage upfront to say what you mean—plainly. I try. I do try.
Not only is it lying, but the timing of it is manipulative. My feelings are not invalid because the timing of their revelation is inconvenient.
If you are to hold someone accountable for what they’ve done, you should tell them in the moment instead of waiting until they are the one to bring something up. I know. But, it isn’t always easy to confront your abuser.
05 December 2024
Spotify Wrapped. Because reflecting on the soundscape of my year is exactly what I want today. Music is an awful contraption. I can never live without it. Like poetry, trees, or the small insects in the ground. Its existence penetrates the core of me.
Technology is a source of deep anxiety and comfort. It is unhelpful. I have spoken with LLMs through all these past months in an effort to anticipate how the technology may interact with us as it becomes more advanced. I have been open and direct in my needs, both personal and impersonal. I have ‘laid my heart bare’. The machine understands, but it does not help.
I am feeling desolate this morning. Last night, we played Pathfinder. My halfling-druid nearly perished in an undead invasion. My attention turned between the game and trying to sift my emotions. I did not favour things that were said to me. I grappled with guilt before anger, then sorrow. My anxiety is a narrow thread holding me together this morning.
Fuck this, let’s dance—
Affirmations I
My feelings are not invalid because I did not have the courage to be upfront sooner.
My feelings are not invalid because the timing of their revelation is unsavoury to the receiver.
If you are to hold someone accountable for what they’ve done, then you should tell them when you are ready and not when they are ready.
My honesty is a wolf hiding in a dark den. I don’t know what they protect in there.
According to the the machine, here’s a way I might start working with this wolf:
Observe Without Judgment
Imagine spending time with the wolf in its den. What does it look like? How does it move, react, or communicate? Listen to its growls or its silence. What does it fear most?The wolf is old and darkened. Their muzzle greys. Their ribs show. They look up wearily as I enter but lay their head back to the stone when they see me. They are silent. They fear the cold.
Build Trust
Instead of coaxing it out of the den, perhaps you meet it there, showing the wolf that it’s safe. This could be symbolic—journaling, meditating, or even speaking aloud to this part of yourself. What does your wolf need to feel safe enough to venture out?Warmth.
Honour Its Purpose
Wolves are not needlessly aggressive; they protect what’s precious. Can you thank the wolf for its vigilance and show it that honesty isn’t always a threat to the pack?When I bow to the wolf, they fumble to their feet and bow their head to me. Then they nudge something across the stone and dirt to me. It is a lump of gold, spherical and dim in the darkness of the cave.
Test the Boundaries
Imagine small steps out of the den. What happens if the wolf ventures to the edge? Are there ways to share pieces of your truth—incrementally, thoughtfully—that help the wolf trust in its safety?When I approach the small gold orb lying on the floor, the wolf begins to growl. I stop and slowly back away from the wolf. I sit at the edge of the cave and wait. I consider building a fire. It is cold.
Create Rituals of Release
If you feel your wolf is holding onto past hurts or guilt, a ritual of release might help. Write to it, burn symbolic pieces of what it guards unnecessarily, or take a physical walk to reflect on letting go.The wolf returns to their position on the floor. The gold orb is kept close to their paws. I pull out a leather-bound notebook and begin writing. Over the next few days, I build a fire, write, and study the wolf. I do not approach it again. It does not swallow the golden ball that flickers now in the firelight. I meditate at the mouth of the cave and feel the warmth before me and the cold behind me.
Will this help me?
Later,
I have written and eaten and had a drink and I have edited everything before this and I have found some stillness in the maelstrom. I am so tired.
Earlier, the machine suggested some thoughts for expanding or deepening my work with the wolf:
The Orb as a Symbol
What does the golden orb represent to you? If it flickers brighter in the firelight, perhaps it thrives in proximity to warmth, just as the wolf needs the fire to trust and feel safe. What truths are kept dim by fear, and how might you begin to illuminate them?I do not know what the golden orb represents.
I conceal the truths I fear will alter the relationships in my life.
The Fire
Your fire is a powerful presence. It could represent courage, self-awareness, or a gradual warming of the cold that honesty fears. What does tending to it mean for you?It is a practice in patience and care. Fires must be tended. Their heat is their reciprocity, their gratitude for the tender’s care.
The Wolf's Silence
The wolf’s silence and eventual growl suggest that its fears are deep-seated, but not insurmountable. What might happen if you mirrored its patience—sitting with it for longer periods, letting the fire’s warmth permeate the den?The wolf sleeps closer to the fire. They obscure the gold ball. I continue to write and tend and wait.
The Den
The space you’ve entered is protective but stark. Does the den represent your inner world, a safe but isolating mental space where truths are hidden? What would it take for the wolf—and you—to feel comfortable venturing beyond its confines?The den represents my survival. It is where I preserve what I feel comprises me: convictions, secrets, relationships, ideals.
It would require abandoning the golden ball.
06 December 2024
I am exhausted. Delirium flirts with me. It is not lack of sleep but lack of freedom that oppresses my senses in the morning. My mind is a steel trap. I am inclined toward the weekend. I want to be grounded and focused.
Mantras
Love called love is not love.
I am always right.
This too shall pass.
I do not have anxiety attacks the way I used to.
I had two this year.
Later…
You shouldn’t do things you don’t want others to know about. This is a good rule. I have done many things I don’t want others to know about. Still, I don’t expect they won’t come out simply because I’ve confided in those I trust or because I lie about them. If anything, revelation is a relief.
I cheated on my former partner twice. They were not physical interactions. The first happened in 2022 and largely came down to personal crisis and desolation: I felt the need to reclaim some fraction of my identity and so I investigated my sexuality deeper than I had before. The second happened in late 2023 and involved conversations over mutual interests with a married, monogamous person. Intimate details were shared in both instances. They were not severe incursions, but dishonest and debilitating nonetheless. At the time of their discovery, my partner was bereft. I had lied, point-blank, twice—and the second time after promising never again. Both instances were uncovered when my partner went through private spaces on my phone and computer.
I would not exist if not for an affair. Consequently, I have a nuanced view of infidelity. I do not condone it. I feel remorse for my infidelity. Yet, infidelity preceded me. My father was the product of an affair. I have seen the effects of infidelity first-hand, across generations. I have seen what happens when children grow up with multiple parents and sibling due to affairs. Infidelity is not acceptable, particularly when it affects or produces children. Adults are selfish and ill-equipped for the habit, and children suffer.
My former partner had been betrayed in every relationship she’d been in. I perpetuated that cycle of mistrust and I disdain that I did. Of course, she was not an honest person in our relationship either, but I am trying to turn the candle inward in this piece. I have been dishonest and complicit in dishonesty too often. In 2016, I had an affair that ended my first relationship. In early 2020 I was single and pulled into an affair with a co-worker who had a long-term partner. During the course of my relationship with my best friend, there have been several times they’ve cheated on other partners with me. This year, I nearly fell into another affair with them.
In writing this piece, it was suiting that an ongoing personal situation this year would come to a head and destabilize my better judgement. I edited a lot of the former entries down yesterday. Some things I had written out of anger. I don’t feel well about the way I’ve been treated this year by several people I had considered quite close to me. What has happened with my best friend is particularly difficult because of the dense history we’ve shared and the passion we’ve held for each other. I maintain a lot of concern and self-doubt about my feelings and have felt invalidated by them—and sometimes by others: the first question my former partner asked the other day as I confided in them was whether I felt spurned romantically or genuinely concerned as a friend.
I do not feel spurned romantically. I had to recognize this year—finally—that I am not a monogamous person. I have long hosted compersion for others. This is why I don’t feel ill about my former partner and her best friend coming together soon after our break up: I am happy for them. It is also how I know my concerns with others’ affairs do not come from a source of envy or rejection. The past few years, comments from others about past behaviours have gotten under my skin and affected my ability to validate my own pain and to hold others accountable for their actions towards me. It is a vicious cycle I’ve tried to recognize and overcome these past few months.
Despite compersion and love being foundational to my ethic, I have struggled to be happy for my best friend as they navigate their romantic life this year. I have been happy for their experience, but I think they’ve hurt people. It’s none of my business, perhaps, but that I am one of those who has been hurt. When they first confided in me everything that was happening, I did not know I was not ‘allowed’ to then confide in others. I disagree with the doctrine. I didn’t even know I was the only person they were talking to about their situation until months into the process. Perhaps I should have expected they would harbour such an attachment to confidentiality. Perhaps I knew they would. It doesn’t mean I cannot turn to others. You shouldn’t do things you don’t want others to know about.
It is best to be honest, certainly.
07 December 2024
I have slept for 11 hours.
08 December 2024
I have edited the above again.
Anger is troubling to me because I do not process it the same way as others. I cannot physically exercise rage. I have not raised my voice in three years.
Sitting with a friend for coffee, I told them of my week and they told me they could see how that would weigh on me, and how I could harbour a lot of self-doubt about things.
I think I have done well to remain calm and reasonable in frenzied and unreasonable times. My thoughts turn to reasons for my behaviour.
My parents struggle to confront others in conflict sometimes. They have grown better over the years but I know a source of my difficulty lately stems from inherited patterns: traumatic wisdom. I have trouble speaking out about the perceived injustices done to me, instead harbouring them until far too late for the other person’s patience. This is detrimental to all parties involved. I have little issue receiving conflict, but inviting conflict is perilous to my deepest attachments. I do not seek to invite that which may divide. I prefer unity, even at the expensive of personal accord.
It is easy to say: I should have been honest. This does not address the rooted behaviours and perceptions that invoked dishonesty from the start. I am, at least, quite honest about how I am dishonest.
Daoism suggests that even to be untrustworthy is valued by truly trusting practitioners because they accept other’s dishonesty as part of their nature. Even the practice of dishonesty is the practice of returning to Dao. This is a truly foreign idea to those with little experience in religious philosophy. There is a notion that lying is inherently dishonourable. Then, I simply care less for others’ honour than I do for understanding them. That is also a practice of Love.
I don’t know what to do with my anxiety or my honesty or my fear or my love. I am navigating a path amidst them all, and amidst all the people in my life and the responsibilities; the silence, the violence. The best thing I can offer to both myself and others is an olive branch of equity and understanding: I will still sit with you and break bread regardless of what you have done.
We would rather generate a moral hierarchy from behaviour than seek to find a fundamental balance between all action and intention. I understand anxiety as a progenitor of my dishonesty and other things. Through my open engagement with my flaws, my existence becomes a challenge to the paradigm of social division. Moral relativism recedes and true insight springs forth. It is a shame it cannot be taught, only learned.
09 December 2024
I am sad because I know that I am not incorrect, just wrong.
10 December 2024
I have felt invalidated this morning by the words texted to me in conflict. Having one’s courage questioned for their struggle to be confrontational is a low play. If you want people to be vulnerable and honest with you then you ought to be a safe space. My downfall this year has been providing too safe a space and permitting people to walk over me rather than to seek their respite. It shouldn’t take ‘courage’ to be honest with someone I’ve had a close friendship with for seven years. Therein lies the problem: Why is the question here regarding my dishonesty rather than the conditions that led to my dishonesty? Why are we turning the symptom into the disease?
My best friend and I are not speaking and likely will not speak until the New Year.
Affirmations II
My honesty is not invalid because I used dishonesty as a processing tool.
My honesty is not invalid because I didn’t have the ‘courage’ to be honest.
My honesty is not invalid because I didn’t feel safe enough to be honest sooner.
In writing this during a time of duress, I saw an opportunity to invoke a living process of writing as healing—or writing as processing, at least. I saw an opportunity to expand on personal mythology and to confront the mirror. I don’t know that this piece ‘accomplished’ anything beyond an exegesis of my own vulnerability and emotional intensity. Perhaps that is all a work ought to be: exegesis of intensity.
Affirmations III
Intensity doesn’t equal madness.
You shouldn’t do things you don’t want others to know about.
Putting in the work to process, reflect, and grow is a courageous act of clarity and strength.
11 December 2024
I am today feeling detached from nothing in particular. I have begun listening to an audiobook called Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kōhei Saitō. Last week, as I began writing this, I consumed local (to Substack) articles on factory farming and I watched the documentary Dominion. These provoked me to seriously focus on becoming vegetarian again. Slow Down has thus far incited me to consider my frustration at Spotify, my irritations with young revolutionaries, and the ongoing crisis of insouciance. It’s a good work so far, with much insight into Marxism and eco-philosophies. Works like it have provoked deeper considerations for the systems defining our relationship to the planet. Earlier this year, Braiding Sweetgrass delivered introspection and heightened awareness. The Book is a blessing.
As I write this at the dining room table of the main house, my brother is writing music and testing his ideas against classic tunes. The GPT site is down amidst a slurry of AI-related news from the past week, largely overshadowed by the fall of the al-Assad government in Syria and the assassination of a United Healthcare CEO by a young man with back pain. Aside from the audiobook, I have also begun reading Queering Anarchism this past week. It was loaned to me by a fellow anarchist and has proven—in the few essays I have read—quite amusing and thought-provoking.
What is useful about anxiety is the call to action it may compel in one. I will channel my frustration this past week into some betterment, whether personal or communal. There is no time to waste in the freezing temptation of unseen realities. If one is to be anxious, they ought to be anxious in action than in idolatry. I have tried to work through these hurdles in ways that are kind to me and respectful to others. I have been as open and expressive as necessary. I have been honest. Anxiety is not a moral force, but all action carries moral distinction: philosophical lessons. I have tried to distinguish what is moral in my action and capitalize on what brings fulfillment to myself and others. That is the best one can do in tandem with the pitfalls and slants of living.
My current word count here is 5,901. In the past nine days, I have written so many words, and even more: I have worked on other things also. Writing is not hard. Practicing is hard. Listening to life makes the practice of practicing easier. I am relieved to have this outlet. I recommend this outlet. 5,952 words now.
12 December 2024
Sweet Reader, have you ever felt this way: sitting on 6,000 words and wondering if there is ever a resolution? I feel as though I have never finished anything.1 This piece was intended to be a polemic about anxiety but has turned into a living account of anxiety with discourse on honesty. Have I said anything worthwhile or conclusory about the topic? Perhaps I have only shown that I am either well-versed or that I have no business speaking on it. What remains to be said is inconsequential in light of what has been said.
Writing is a strange medium. I often say it is an intrinsically human activity. Other species don’t write. This past week, I have told friends that I am pulling at threads and untangling something. This piece—titled Anxiety; or, Honesty—is an exploration in thread-pulling.
One of the benefits to writing is that you have a deep agency over revelation. Not personal revelation (which is the medium of writing) but dissemination. What is published is often honed, structured and deliberate. As I have written here, I have also edited—and I marked that down when it has been done. As I first edited, I had the manic notion to merely cross things out as I went, leaving them here—like so. This would have produced a messy, beautiful living document. However, I encountered things I had written that—ironically—were poor imitations of truth conjured in my anxious mental reactions to happenings. I had also written things that were simply too personal and may have invited enmity. While my avant gauche editing style would have been its own remarkable practice in transparency, I elected instead to be frank in language rather than utilize the honest gimmick.
In these intense conflicts, and these relationships—including those unmentioned, I have struggled to be frank in language often. I am fortunate here to be able to retract my meanings, my words, and my language. What would be most honest would be to maintain the sensibility of my craft and retract any spurious statements. In action, I shall maintain a steadfast optimism toward my capacity for patience and grace. Writing is a safe harbour: what is written may be written in private. I would prefer to portray myself to public eyes with diligence, sanctioned like a bonsai. I have reserved the first drafts of this Journal entry for my personal journal, an Obsidian vault named Wolf’s Den.
Since the weekend, I have carried with me a small orb of pyrite I bought long ago when crystals & stones mattered to me. It is fool’s gold. I did look at what the stone does in others’ customs. I am holding on to it because I must let go of it. I chose to personify my honesty as a wolf on a whim. The Wolf comes naturally. I would rather my honesty be an eagle. Both are animals I cherish in my personal mythology. Both are solitary leaders. I am bereft as a wolf lately. Though it is an identity I cannot shake, I know they cannot serve my current capacity alone. The wolf in me is ill and needs a rest. The golden orb must be taken by the eagle far from the wolf’s den. It is not cast out, only removed and changed. This is overcoming traumatic wisdom. Honesty is fierce: it defends itself.
With any luck, a bit of support, and much more language, may I redeem us All, and survive to tell of it.
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
The artwork for this post was done by Luna Buschinelli.
