Anxiety
sometimes distance doesn’t change how much you know someone.
It only changes how helpless you feel watching them from afar.
There was a time in my life when I allowed myself to be uncertain. uncertainty was my mindset. it did not affect the technical side of my questions, nor did it damage my daily decision making on the surface. but internally, I sometimes drowned in it. the paradox of choices embedded itself into my behavior, and perfectionism became a side effect of refusing to pick what felt suboptimal. I lived inside my head more than I realized. this state was invisible to the external world. it was entirely internal. I was doubting my own internals.
This is a part I have always wanted to document and share but I never found the right words for it. it is the scariest feeling I have ever experienced, and it is mainly composed of fear. but it is also confusing in a way that, unless untangled slowly and honestly, it will remain confusing forever.
The story goes back to 2023 when I was a student at the University of Khartoum. I wrote about that period before in a draft called days that I still do not understand . during that time, I was packed with fear. I was shaking for no obvious reason, living inside something I could not explain. I kept saying it was my sympathetic nervous system reacting because I was grinding too hard, as if my body had decided to pull the emergency brake for me. but that explanation slowly started to feel shallow. what triggered my nervous system in the first place? why was I already tense before the collapse? why was I restless long before everything fell apart?
if you don’t schedule a break, your body will take one for you, and it probably won’t be at a convenient time.
I had a friend I met online who struggled with social anxiety. He used to tell me how he panicked at the idea of going to the university. I knew he wasn’t lying, but part of me couldn’t truly believe it, that a psychological disorder could control someone that much. I was telling him: you just needed to stop overthinking that people will hurt you, remind yourself there’s no reason to be afraid, and call it a day. Yes, I was ignorant. I tried to convince him to change something he couldn’t change, to “overcome it,” as if these were only voices in his head.
The velocity at which I’m updating my beliefs about the world has never been known to be slow; saying “Oops” and updating my beliefs implies updating my behavior if needed. This oscillating pattern of behavior has been defining the kind and amount of love I receive in this world, updating a behavior is either bringing me joy by interacting with people, loving myself, or appreciating the world, or has led me to a series of overwhelm led by the need to solve the questions I’m cornered with.