Passing Stranger

I am not a stranger to anxiety. Anxiety feels like a red balloon welling up inside your chest, bigger, bigger, until it is on the precipice of bursting. It is a palpable sensation, one that is not unfamiliar to me. I used to experience it in grade 7, every time I had to go up and give a presentation in front of the whole class. It has been a long time since I last experienced it, until yesterday when I felt it again, building up with every breath I didn’t take in time, as I struggled to keep up.

I am the most anxious I have ever been in a long time. But only today did I realize this. I was always an anxious girl, but it was the sort of anxiety that drove me to perform well in school, to always work harder. In the last few months, it has become the opposite. It is the kind of anxiety that paralyzes me, that takes away the motivation I need to take action, and instead keeps me on Tiktok every morning, after I wake up an hour before my alarm, scrolling, scrolling for the quick 5 second bursts of happiness, that come and just as quickly fade away.

I am an anxious girl yes. But only on the surface, or at least I’d like to believe. Deep down, I am a happy girl. It is what my friends think of me. It is what I know to be true of myself. At the core, I am meant to be happy. I am the girl who is easily excitable, the one who laughs loudly, feels freely, I am the girl who needed to use an alarm where you need to do a math question in order to turn it off, because in med school I was also the girl who would sleep past her alarm and rush to lectures, slightly late, but always happy to be there.

I don’t think I have been very happy lately. I know this to be an objective measurable fact. Two years ago, I visited Sarah’s house in Vancouver, which she shared with a few roommates. On their kitchen they had a board, where there was a list of names arranged in a little bar graph, and above each name: a number of weeks. For instance: Sarah — 1 week. For some people, it was days. I asked Sarah what this number meant. She answered matter-of-factly that it was the amount of time each person had gone without crying. At the time I found the concept quite funny, in a tongue in cheek kind of way, what better way to make sadness less sad than to plot it into a table, excel-style. The idea seemed entirely silly and unrelatable to me, I didn’t think I would belong in a house where time gone without crying was measured in units of days. I jokingly told Sarah that I would not make the cut, I could not remember the last time I had cried, it must have been months. Nowadays, the concept doesn’t seem so outrageous to me. I would make the crying list, if not top the leaderboard.

Lately, I have forgotten what it feels like to be that person I was two years ago. Until today, when I had some brief moments of clarity. I woke up early, but got out of bed and meditated. I went on a bike ride. Had a small breakfast, before attending the Sunday yoga classes at the community center which I used to do every week with Vanessa. She was still there, every Sunday. Turns out, even I after I left, she still kept going. As I laid on the hard vinyl floors and stared up at the bare gym ceilings, I had a brief sense that everything was okay, maybe not forever, but at least for the hour I was going to be in the class for. And so, for now, I could relax, be present and not think about anything else other than the cramping in my right leg that had been raised for what felt like an eternity. Afterwards, I met up with a childhood friend for coffee after, and we walked in outlet stores and despite my constant warnings that it was probably going to rain soon, he insisted it was going to be okay, what was the worst that could happen, rain? So we kept going. It in fact did rain, and we ran into an A&W to take cover. We had some great conversation until the rain stopped and we said goodbye. And everything was, in fact, okay.

The moral of today? Everything is okay. It always is, and if not now, it always will be eventually. That is something I have forgotten lately. Instead, I fear uncertainty, the inevitability that things will not be okay. And I preemptively worry, I get upset prematurely at disasters that have yet to strike, and perhaps never will. It makes me extra sensitive about the things I value most, my work, my relationships. If there is a small sign of turbulence, I become scared, which translates as irritability, irrationality, emotionality, and a whole lot of tears. It is not fair to those around me, particularly the people I love, who try their best to manage these reactions, when it is entirely not their responsibility. It is my weight to bear.

I also realized today that I have hinged so much of my happiness on factors outside of my control (which only adds to my anxiety) while neglecting to take responsibility for the things I can control. Things such as taking care of myself, eating well, sleeping well, exercising — things that directly contribute to my happiness. I have not written in so long, I have not seen the friends I used to routinely spend time with. All of these things that have served to fill my cup, I seemed to have forgotten about. And also the things that used to make me feel alive: going on runs, listening to music, reading books that make me cry, travelling. An hour ago, I felt a mild nervousness creep up as I started planning my work day for tomorrow. I closed my laptop, and went on a walk instead. I listened to A Summer’s Day by Joe Hisaishi, and noticed how the summer wind had a slight chill tonight, as it blew through my face, hair, forcing you to take a deep inhale. I felt calmer with every gust. The Flower Garden played next, and I felt like I was in Paris or Florence or the canals of Amsterdam again, window shopping, walking into fragrant bakeries, striking conversations with interesting strangers. I was reminded of a brief flicker of me that I had forgotten existed, as I watched her, in my mind’s eye, flit from one narrow cobblestoned street to the next.

This made me smile. It reminded me that I still had much to see, much to do, and much look forward to. It reminded me that there would be many more summers ahead, many more travels to be planned, many more worlds to be explored, and mostly importantly, that I still possessed the unique ability to feel it — the magical feeling of being in love with a city, with the stories you encounter, with life as a whole. I have not lost this at least.

Nor have I lost the ability to write. I used to say that I only wrote when I was extremely happy or extremely unhappy, there is something about the intensity of both extremes that is inspiring for a writer. And there is something about the writing process that is so cathartic for me, it allows me to unload whatever unhappiness that weighs on me, such that it no longer belongs to me in the same way it did before. And so, I will try to write more, as well as sleep more, exercise more, laugh more, worry less. I am optimistic that I am still myself after all, that she is there underneath the superficial layers of stress that I will inevitably shed with time.

I will end this with a poem. I had once posted this on my old blog, when I had just come back from backpacking in Europe and did not wish to lose the version of me I was when I was travelling. A line from it is still printed somewhere along the walls of my favourite bookstore in Paris. It hold a slightly different weight this time around, but feels fitting, if not more so than before. Enjoy.

To a Stranger

By Walt Whitman

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.