It's Not That Deep

“ Remember that you are needed. Remember that not all things are visible or provable. Love, faith, pain, anxiety, depression, compassion… these aren’t always quantifiable. They aren’t always measurable. They are often invisible. But they are real. And so are you. ” —Jenny Lawson, You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds 1. Self-doubt, you ignorant slut I’m going to let you in on a widely kept secret. Self-doubt—otherwise known as anxiety’s crazy sister—is a liar. She’s lying to you. The voices in your head are liars. The ones that say that you’re not doing enough? Liars. The ones that say you’ll never feel like enough? Liars. The ones that say you’ll never feel like enough unless you commit yourself ruthlessly to doing things outside of your comfort zone all in the name of satisfying what other people and society have told you your entire life you should be doing? The biggest goddamn liars I have ever met. But it’s also important to remember that self-doubt is natural. Wit

“ I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock. ” —Gail Honeyman Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed told me to write what I know, so this is what I know. I’ve always been too emotional and hypersensitive. I once cried for an entire afternoon when my mom lost her anklet diving into a lake. I had no real emotional attachment to this anklet—it was just her favorite that summer and she lost it and that made me overwhelmingly sad. I also once had a full-blown emotional breakdown when I came home from the bookstore to find that one of my books was damaged after a woman fell onto my bag when the bus took a wide turn (I was much older than you would’ve liked me to be, too).

“ This is the only advice I can offer. Each time something like this happens, take a breath and ask yourself, honestly: am I dead? Did I die? Is the world different? Has my soul splintered into a thousand shards and scattered to the winds? I think you’ll find, in nearly every case, that you are fine. Life rolls on. No one cares. Very few things—apart from death and crime—have real, irreversible stakes, and when something with real stakes happens, humiliation is the least of your worries. ” —Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman It’s often hard for me to believe that it took me eighteen years to realize that I’ve literally always been anxious. It may have manifested in strange, indirect ways growing up, but it was always there. I only began to realize the extent to which I have anxiety when the growing responsibilities of adulthood blew the lid off of my inner obsession with being perfect. I’ve always taken things very seriously. Even now, as an adult, there are very few t