an attachment to anxiety

The room was at the end of a long hallway. It was different from the room they used before. It was bigger and emptier this time, with no windows to escape from. The floor was covered in an old, thin carpet that housed blue lint balls and a community of dust bunnies. There were two, uncomfortable looking chairs sitting in the far corner of the room. These chairs faced each other and were separated by a dated, round end-table that held a tacky looking vase filled with pink plastic flowers. Adjacent to these chairs was a wooden desk. Stacks of paper were strewn messily across the surface of this desk in an unorganized manner. The lonely desk faced the wall accompanied by a third uncomfortable looking chair. There was no computer present at this desk, the only thing sitting on the desk (besides the stacks of paper) was a small lamp. The lamp was the only thing that provided light in that lonely room.

"Please take a seat" the older man said to the younger one, "We're going to begin soon"

The younger man complied and sat down in one of the chairs in the far corner of the room, uncertain if this was what he wanted all along. His stomach had begun to perform acrobatics and his head got lighter as he waited. The older man sat down in the chair opposite of the younger man's. He sat there and stared intensely at the younger man. Nothing was said at this point, everything was deathly silent, however, the quiet resonated loudly within the walls of the secluded room.

"I don't know where to begin," the younger man finally let out.

"Take your time," was the response from the older man.

And after another moment of silence, the younger man began.

"I finally did something productive last week. I did my taxes. It was a good feeling I guess, being out and about confirming my existence to the world. It definitely was a change from sitting at home, locked up in my room, staring lifelessly at my lap top."

"And what prompted you to do your taxes?" the older man asked.

"I felt like I put it off enough. I mean, I had intended to do them at the beginning of April, and so I figured a month delay was pretty bad. I guess, I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't come to see you last week. I mean, you did say one small achievement at a time. This was my one small achievement for last week."

"That's good. And how is work?"

"Well, work gets me out of my apartment. Even for a little bit. I still feel fake going in. I mean, I smile and I laugh, but I don't really mean it when I do. It's more like a mask that I wear so that people won't question me. You know, question why I'm so somber, or why I'm so angry. A mask that hides my inability to feel anything significant at this point."

"And why do you feel like you need to wear that mask?"

"Hmm. I don't know. I guess I've become unhappy with myself over the past year that I don't want anyone to see how unhappy and disgusted I am with myself. Or maybe, I just don't want to be that guy that no one wants to work with because of what I've become: a moving cadaver that's waiting for his departure home. If I had a choice, I probably wouldn't go to work. I don't really enjoy being there. I feel like it makes me more anxious about how messed up I've become going in to work everyday. The only good things that I get out of work is the change of atmosphere and it gives me reason to wake up in the morning and not waste away in my bed."

"Have you thought about trying other activities to give you a change of environment? Like maybe walking downtown and going shopping?"

"I don't like going shopping really. It's too crowded on the sidewalks during the day. I get really annoyed with people on the sidewalks. I guess you could say I'm an angry walker. I just end up being rude to people who are walking too slow. You know, start cussing them out and pushing through them. I don't know why I do, it's not like I'm ever in a hurry to get anywhere, but they really grate on me. The worst part is that you can't ignore them because if you do you'll end up trampling over them. Which may not be such a bad idea at all."

"Fair enough, what about another small goal? Have you figured one out yet for this week?"

"No, not really. I mean, nothing really pressing needs to be done. I guess I could clean my room and do laundry, but I find that as soon as my bedroom door is closed, all I want to do is curl up in my bed with my lap top and watch movies. It's a funk that I can't break out of."

"Well that's understandable. Sometimes, when your depressed, you tend to start conditioning yourself to do certain things in certain regular environments. So what you need to do is find a reason to go outside, or to get out of your room."

"Well, I guess I can go visit a friend of mine who lives pretty far away, but I have the same problem with the transit as I do with the sidewalk."

"Perhaps you should push yourself past this irritation and try to just go and visit your friend?"

"I could. I mean, I want to. But then again I tend to not be very good company for the most part, especially when I'm sober. I'm afraid that I'll end up getting over there, saying hi, and then fifteen minutes later having the urge to leave and go back home. I don't think fifteen minutes really warrants the thirty minute bus ride to my friends house and the thirty minute bus ride back to my house. It would be a waste of time for both our parts, and to have to put myself in a position of getting irritated by the busgoers for a mere fifteen minutes is not something that I think I'd classify as a small achievement."

"You need to be careful because when someone is suffering from anxiety and depression, they tend to be quick to make excuses in order to perpetuate their current behaviour. This is not conducive to the healing process. Sometimes, you just need to bite the bullet and go out there and do something different. If not, you'll just dig yourself deeper and deeper into the feelings you are having right now."

The older man glanced at his wristwatch. Silence engulfed the two again. To the younger man, the room had become smaller, slightly more cramped. The windowless nature of the room along with the dimly lit ambiance was beginning to make his nerves act in a way that he dreaded.

"It's hard not to make excuses though. I can't help thinking about what could happen and what most likely would. It's like I'm anxious over what I think I'll be anxious about if I try to face my anxieties. A perpetual chain of worries you could call it," the young man responded.

"That perpetual chain of worries is what were trying to break. So in order to that, you need to be able to focus more on the now rather than the what if."

"I can't help myself. I mean, maybe if I was stoned or something I'd be able to stop worrying about worrying."

"Yes marijuana does tend to calm anxiety, but there are other ways to calm anxiety that are better than marijuana."

"I don't know what to say. I mean I could give it a try, but I can't make promises. It's hard enough for me to spend five hours at work which is a mere seven minutes away from my apartment, that the thought of spending a whole day somewhere far from my apartment is actually quite terrifying."

"You seem to be afraid of a lot of things. The only way to get over those fears is to face them."

The older man looked at his watch again. The younger man visibly uncomfortable at this point. The dark room grew dimmer as the young man began to realize that his anxiety had been playing a fool out of him. He was never like this before, never so quick to jump on excuses. Never so attached to a place that in a couple of months would no longer be home. The older man saw this and decided that the conversation needed to be changed, and so the conversation veered off in other directions that were not so pestering to the young man's psyche. The older man again looked at his wristwatch.

"Well, our time is up. I want you to come back again next week and we'll continue from where we left off. Try to make it to your friends place sometime this week, and if not, see if you can find a neutral ground where you both can meet each other and take your mind off of things for a while."

Both men stood up, one thanking the other, and exited the dark lonely room. As the door closed, the empty room got smaller, the carpet got thinner and the the lamp got dimmer. The walls began to whisper with one another in weeping voices, "hope will not easily be found."