Angst In My Pants

I constantly feel anxious. Luckily, it is not always severe. That doesn’t make it less frustrating though. If anything, it is worse to suffer from continuous mild anxiety (CMA) because one feels like a real phony.

Success: A Story

Regardless of what some might say, I have some progress in my life and have pictures and a menu to prove it. There was a time when I would only eat very plain food and would not allow one type of food to touch another type when on my plate (for example, cauliflower could not touch the brussel sprouts). There was no way boiled potatoes could touch the stewing beef as the liquid from the beef would colour the potatoes, and potentially make them soggy. Two things had to happen – the beef had to go on a separate plate and bits of onion and most of the liquid from the beef had to be removed. One would imagine that this made my food life pretty bland and depressing, but these feelings were not felt – instead a feeling of comfort and safety.

I suppose the first change came when after booking a flight to Italy for the first time. I thought to myself, “I cannot go to Italy with my diet,” so I tried eating pasta. Within weeks I was an addict, though eating the pre-made jars of sauce.

Then, when living in Germany, I tried strawberries – this led on to blueberries, green beans, wholemeal bread, sweetcorn, peppers, even carrots. I had never been so healthy (though I lost lots of weight, and was always feeling hungry).

It is only fair that I admit that whilst I was trying new food, I was often just eating the same ‘new’ dish over and again – a habit that is hard to kick.

Now I cook everything from scratch, and am starting to try new recipes even. Before, going to restaurants was difficult, to say the least. Now I can eat in most places.

The question that has always entered my mind throughout all of this is the extent to which these issues with food are expressions of altogether different issues. Someone once raised the question to me, “What if you tried the food and liked it?” It was then suggested that my fear of food is a symptom of my fear of success, or of being happy. At the time this seemed true to me. However, if this is true, how come the fears of living life do not disappear alongside the fears of food? That is very puzzling, and I will probably never have an answer. Nonetheless, one should be content with the new variety of food in one’s life.

(Since writing this, I now eat bruschetta, corn on the cob, and flapjacks).

A Portrait

A recent discovery that I am afraid of photographs has brought home that perhaps I need therapy of some sort.

Let me be clear, this is not a fear of the photograph itself, but, rather, photographs relating to my life. I have many camera films that I have never printed, and, quite frankly, I do not want to see them. And I do not like to look at the photographs I have. The thought of looking at photographs of my past makes me feel nauseous and anxious – as if I have failed to complete something very important. Something has been left undone. What is worse is that I suspect that what I am now is the very thing I failed to complete.

The good news is that I have decided to continue to suppress these feelings, so things are looking up for me.

Scenarios From Out Of Town

I often sit and think about how I would react should a certain things happen or be said to me. This escalates, and I get angry about it. I then realise that half and hour has passed me by, and I have been sitting getting angry about something that has never happened, and probably never will. This might be what mad people do.

Day-Dream Believer

I used to believe that my day-dreams were just as important as living life, perhaps more so, as to an extent I was in control. I believed that to imagine something was as good as reality itself, as one could still take pleasure from it. I even convinced myself that these day-dreams were real. The problem was that not only were the day-dreams often very similar, but the pleasure was always a passing moment. So afterwards I often felt sad and depressed about it, and then believed I felt this way because I was back in the really real, physical world, without realising it was because of the falseness of the imaginary world.

Fortunately, I realised that these dreams were not pleasurable experiences, they were attempts at gaining power and control.

I still day-dream occasionally, but now have the capacity to interrupt it, and to see the dangers of living life in a day-dream. That is not to say that it is bad to let the mind wander - one must just be careful not to confuse two worlds.

A Secret Story

Some stories simply cannot be written, only spoken. There is a short episode that I have told to a few people, and decided to write it down, seeing as I have always had the response of it being such a nice story. However, on attempting to write it the story became as damp as the patch on my living-room wall. All the pleasantness from the memory of the episode, and even of my re-telling of it, vanished. So, reader, you will never read the story, nor will I ever disclose what story it is.

But I am not unhappy about this, after all, some stories cannot be told at all.

(The secret, then, is not the story itself, but which story it is that could not be written.)

Pictures of Pompeii

The progression of civilisation puzzles me somewhat, as with it we no longer have such beautiful floors.