i’m anxious about my new job.
and where are you?
i’m crying because my anxiety has become so overwhelming that i don’t think i can go on anymore.
and where are you?
i’m questioning all the life choices that led me here, wondering at which turn it all went south.
and where are you?
i’m looking for a hand to hold beneath the sheets at night, when terrors wake me.
and where are you?
i’m searching a sea of strange faces for your familiar gaze that feels like coming home.
and where are you?
i’m looking for reassurance that i’ll be okay on monday; i’m looking for your support.
but where are you?
where are you now?
seven hours ahead.
almost 6000 miles away.
i left you.
on a different continent.
but how i wish things were different.
how i wish i’d never had to leave.
i’m so resistant to the idea of monday because it means that i’m definitely moving on with my life. it’s the next big hurdle.
and you won’t be there.
beside me. telling me everything’s going to be okay and
squeezing my hand.
it’ll just be me.
by myself.
and who am i?
stormsinteacups 
You ask ‘who am I?
The answer is a sensitive, perceptive, intuitive, empathic, academically gifted artist. You are not the failure you sometimes incorrectly see yourself as. Your emotionality is part of your intrinsic inner beauty.
Look at the evidence.
If they didn’t think you could do this job, they would have given it to someone else, wouldn’t they? I mean, face it Storms, there’s no shortage of candidates these days, is there? So the most objective evidence is, you are the best person for the job.
Perhaps you have got a habit of catastrophizing because of past misfortune – haven’t we all? But it is not evidence-based catastrophizing.
So of course you are going to be alright on Monday. And the day after. And the days after that. The most likely scenario is that the new colleagues you will meet on Monday will want to welcome you and make you feel at home, after all, they chose YOU to be in their team. You got offered the job because someone in charge thought you were the best candidate.
They want you to feel safe and welcome. They want your arrival to be as comfortable and low-grief as you do.
Consciousness can be thought of as like a russian doll; thoughts within thoughts within thoughts, chronologically developed, so the smallest one in the middle starts at birth and the largest one, our self today, contains all the previous versions, including their emotional experiences along the way. It is by this means that childhood fears are visited on the adult, who subconsciously hears the distress of younger dolls deep down inside but consciously experiences as current adult anxiety. This is how the adult can disconnect themselves from the anxiety by doing the work of acknowledging the deep hurt from all those years ago. ‘That was then but this is now.’
As the cliché says, ‘The truth will indeed set you free, but it will sure piss you off first’.
One thing that helped me a lot when I myself suffered severe anxiety all those years ago was the mantra ‘Fear is just your imagination bluffing’.
Could it be the fear you fear right now – your imagination bluffing – is actually a hangover, an inappropriate extrapolation of something seriously frightening from a long time ago, some kind of misperception that you are not worthy of love, which can so easily happen when innocent children get caught in the family crossfire?
Think about it, what EXACTLY is it that you fear?
Have you ever tried to write it down in detail, in all its grisly detail, and then read it back, because many find that this can mitigate the anxiety. It can be that seeing it on the page takes away its power, ‘calling it out’ as the feminists say.
The more you can give voice to the younger frightened one inside, and listen to her voice, the less likely she is to trip you up in your new job.
Of course, it hurts like fuck to lose someone you wanted to keep, but it also increases the probability of finding new lovers. I recommend you focus on this on the tube, bus, whatever, on Monday morning.
You are just as worthy of love as much as others you have chosen to love yourself; despite some probably horrible experiences in recent times, and probably in your formative years, you always somehow shake off that black echo and choose the path of light and hope.
This is because, despite some seriously bad luck, you are a beautiful soul who is naturally attracted to the good in people, like a moth to a flame. And perhaps that is part of what makes you anxious, because somehow, somewhere, you always get back on the horse and try again. Because deep down you know you are worth it. The black echo is no match for your soul.
(I say ‘luck’, not to trivialise, but to emphasise misfortune is random, because the universe is random, and thus to challenge the erroneous temptation that you somehow ‘deserved it’, or that you somehow ‘don’t deserve’ love.)
Your tag line says
‘She lost him, but she found herself. And somehow, that was everything.’
So deep down, you know how to survive, and you have probably survived events much worse than the first day on a new job.
You’re a star Storms!
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