Change

Well, lately I've felt a growing desire to write some sort of essay again, seeing as everything involving my field of study is extremely scientifical.. I just miss being creative and making those linguistic gears turn but most importantly, I just want to express myself in a way that I find hard to when talking to friends, family or therapists.

My thoughts lately have revolved a lot around the unavoidable and the unexpected. Change.
We are always told that change is something to be embraced, that we would all be dead or dying if we weren't constantly evolving. But in my opinion, the change that is easy to deal with is an intrinsic one. One that you chose for yourself unlike one that is suddenly dropped in your lap. This kind of change is one mostly outside of your control.
That is something I have never been able to process well.

I remember when I was twelve and my grandmother passed away after long years of battling a misdiagnosed cancer. This was my first encounter with change. At least one that would brand me. My twelve year old self just couldn't comprehend the concept of death. How does one's existence just CEASE to be? Where does our mind go? Why does this have to happen? How will you ever come to terms with the fact that you won't ever see or hear that person again? And to this day, I still feel a deep sadness when I catch a wiff of vintage lipsticks. That is the most vivid and most sensory memory I have of my grandmother. The scent of her lipstick.

The next six months were a sleepless nightmare. I was terrified to close my eyes. Back then I was already dealing with nightly panic attacks (for many years). This just added to it all. I was petrified of dying. Of not thinking or existing. Of never being able to hug my mom again. Never being able to read a book or watch my cartoons. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Because in fact just recently I suffered for three or four nights in a row the SAME horrifying nightly terrors, without rhyme or reason. Just like back then, I was scared of going to bed, scared of having that crippling pressure on my chest and that feeling of unstoppable dread, of not being able to escape the monsters roaring in my mind. No deep breath would ever give me enough oxygen to survive the next minute.
In an attempt to calm myself, I started to try figure this shit out, to rationalise. After all, I thought, I am not a silly child, I~m an adult and I am going to suck it up because that's what adults do. They are capable of dealing with irrational and childish anxiety. So when rationalising did not seem to get me any further I succumbed to desperately asking myself just what the hell is wrong with me. Why cant I be normal? Why do I diagnose myself with a terrible and incurable disease? I'm a medicine student for crying out loud. I most definitely know better... Sleep is such a natural and biological thing, it's been done since the dawn of of metabolising organisms.. Just why is it so hard for me to do it? Again, this random bout of night terrors was a change that I wasnt expecting, that I dreaded, that I have prayed for decades to never have to experience again..

It is needless to say that change and I have never been best friends and I daresay we never will be. I just have try to get used to the fact that almost everything is outside of my control. I work as hard as I can, I plan things out as much as possible and I (unhealthily) obsess over every single factor that could affect anything or that could possibly go wrong. And while planning has helped me make my dream of studying medicine come true, it hasn't solved all of my (other) issues. Obviously not.. If it were so easy to control change by planning, it wouldn't be such a big deal. At the end of the day, I can control myself, my actions and reactions but what I have a hard time accepting is that I CANNOT control other people's actions. Actually scratch that, nowadays my emotions have been quite unruly, I cant even control my own emotions at times.

Change is terrifying. Moving away, friendships crumbling, people dying or getting married or starting a family. Finishing a degree, starting work, starting a relationship, confiding in somebody new. It is hard for me to accept that I just have to take it as it comes and deal with it the best way I can, the only way I know and hope for the best. Because I feel like I am left alone at the mercy of life, though I know I have friends and family that will support me. When the Change comes knocking at my door, I feel alone and naked. Worst of all, I feel embarrassed to ask others for help. Guilty even for burdening them with my fragility. Of course they will all leave me, I think to myself, I crumble with so much as a soft gust of wind. Nobody wants to deal with an unstable and emotional personality.

All in all, the past couple of years has brought a lot of change upon me. More bad than good, though the good has been refreshing and liberating enough to barely pull through the bad. And this blog here, my therapy sessions, my attempts to be honest about my feelings, this is all an attempt to deal with this and to hopefully analyse and grow into a stable woman. Somebody my grandmother would be proud of. Somebody that does not neccessarily need help but accepts it if offered because it is easier for two to deal with emotional baggage than one.

So, having poured my heart out just a little bit, I hope to initiate an intrinsic change while building up this blog...