“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.” ― Anaïs Nin
Suggested read: How anxiety affects a relationship and how to tackle it
Whenever I want to express something I am feeling deeply, I need a fellow writer’s help. It is strange no, how I can churn articles after articles on an array of topics, but when it comes to something I desperately want to say, I need words that are not my own. May be it is because I don’t trust myself with my emotions; maybe I feel my words will not do justice to my feelings; maybe I feel the haunting, compelling, lingering, twisting ache deserves a more skilled writer to transmute it into words, without losing anything in translation. Don’t you think it is a lot like how a surgeon cannot operate on people she loves?! All in all, I feel a lot, and I trust very little. I am anxious, and when I try to put my anxiety into words, I become anxious for my anxiety!
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Why is an anxious person protective of his or her anxiety, you ask? Because their anxiety compels them to. That sounds frustrating, doesn’t it? But that is how vicious the cycle is. You are anxious, and you want to stop worrying, but you start getting worried about not worrying!
Anxiety is amputating, to say the least. It chills you to your bones. It empties you of your strengths. It is makes you fear everything. It makes you question everything. It makes you doubt every single thing. Each day becomes a struggle, until one day you fall in love, and realize that the tussle has just begun.
To evince how anxiety and love may actually be allied (against you), another writer comes to my rescue, and this time it is Paulo Coelho. He says,
“After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing.”
In my opinion, true love gives you moments of both ecstasy and agony, but if you are an anxious person, the apprehensions and angst poison the ecstasy, and burgeon the agony. Being anxious and in love is the unhealthiest one can be, emotionally. And so, you need to choose between anxiety and love, one that will always hurt you, and one that might, just might, lift you.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Now, why do we think that love can hurt us, even if it has not? And even if we were hurt in love, it was not love that hurt us, but the expectations, right?! However, that is for another debate. What I was saying was, anxious people worry that they are bound to get hurt in love because their anxiety makes them reflect that way. Think of Anxiety as a childhood friend who has feelings for you, but you never liked him or her that way, because they were not right for you. Nonetheless, they were your closest person, your confidant, the person who you sought counsel from, because they knew you more than anyone else. Now you found someone, Love, in this case, who could be your soulmate, and so, you asked Anxiety if you are doing the right thing by falling for Love. Anxiety obviously shifts in his chair, gets worried that once you start seeing Love, Love will realize how unhealthy Anxiety’s relationship with you has been, and will try to keep you away from him. Anxiety does not like this, and so, he plots a way of doing the same thing with Love: Before Love even finds out about Anxiety, he manipulates you by telling you how you will ruin Love’s life by worrying too much (something that you do because of Anxiety, but he won’t tell you that part!). And so, you keep thinking, and finally concede. You distance yourself from Love. You make the wrong choice.
Suggested read: 15 things you need to know if you’re dating a person with social anxiety
Anxiety scares off Love, but if you give Love a chance, he will give you the courage to say NO to anxiety. Regardless of how badly Anxiety tries to fool you into believing that he wants the best for you, you have to ask him to hit the road. You have to allow Love into your life, and let him help you do away with belongings of Anxiety that you will stumble upon every now and then, when you walk into the café you both used to visit, at the subway, at the theater, at a common friend’s place (Fear, for example), and when you find yourself on your bed after a rather negative day. Anxiety will keep paying you visits, but if you allow Love, he will teach you how to be unflinching toward keeping Anxiety out of your life. He will teach you how to love fiercely, and receive love, fearlessly!
So, tell me, between anxiety and love, who will you choose?
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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