South City Confessions: Nice to finally meet you face-to-face, anxiety

Before anyone else, you must confirm that you have anxiety. I have.

Remember the movie Hidalgo with Viggo Mortensen?

It’s about a long horse race across the desert in 1890, ending in a mere sprint towards an ocean shore. Mortensen’s cowboy isn’t picked to win, but he’s right there at the end, riding an animal as hard as a human could towards the finish line. As he reaches it, the instrumental score heightens and swells like the waves being stared down by many on horseback.

That’s everybody battling anxiety, at least the furious race across the world part of the story. I feel like the anxiety is constantly on our heels, edging closer, so we whip the horse’s ass (or our ass) a little harder to surge ahead. There’s no guarantee that our horse won’t trip over a rock, slam into another animal, or give up altogether in a fit of emotion and exhaustion. One can climb back on the horse and continue towards that beautiful shoreline.

As a kid and teenager, I wasn’t exactly taught to be tough and keep my feelings and vulnerabilities locked away with a key hidden somewhere else. It wasn’t like my dad got me face to face one night and blurted out a movie line like, “You can’t feel too much in this world, or you’ll get hurt.” An organic subscription to the Bill Burr comedy bit, “Push it Down, dude,” occurred without me knowing it.

It’s a hilarious bit by the legendary standup comedian. He’s talking about a 36-year-old mustachioed male on an airplane panicking and making weird noises. Burr wanted to slap some brutal guy sense into the guy.

“Push it down, act like you have answers, do some man stuff!”

That’s most guys when it comes to their anxiety. Push it down, don’t fuss, and keep moving forward. The movies and celebrities often get us in trouble when they’re not teaching us life lessons. Picking and choosing which to believe in and pick up to take with you is the tricky part of the ingestion.

Watching my dad growing up, a stranger could have observed that he was battling anxiety. It’s too bad the daily grind of work, fixing shit at home, and taking care of the kids when the wife was at Children’s Hospital helping sick kids got in the way of him recognizing the effects until he was older. Or, that’s when he could talk about it.

Anxiety is something that looks at you like a neighbor who will never move. They will be outside staring at you in the morning, afternoon, and night. They only sleep when you’re consistently on your medicine and relaxed. Sleepless in Seattle could have very well been about someone battling their depression and anxiety instead of a cute romantic comedy.

My anxiety ramped up considerably when I started driving the box truck for my company, Crescent Plumbing Supply. If there happened to be an order with an item or two that could be treacherous or cause some mental disruption: a tight street, driveway, or combination of the two, my brain turned it into a tiny boat being pushed all over a large body of water. It was the end of the world as we knew it. The answer was simple: Take your time, breathe, get the job done without hurting yourself, and breathe again.

There were times when the fears and suspicions were justified; most of the time, it wasn’t a big deal at all to anyone who had control of their anxiety. I didn’t have power for years, but acknowledging it puts me closer to living more comfortably with it than ever before. The panic would set in the night before the deliveries, when it was like being locked in an escape room with my anxiety and no clue on how to get away. Thinking it’s normal is failing to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

It took years for me to recognize that something was wrong, and talking about it now still feels a little weird. The tough guy persona doesn’t exactly stand down immediately. Before anyone can tell me I have anxiety, I must say to myself that I have anxiety; only then can the work start being done to improve the day-to-day stress attacks that shouldn’t rise above a whimper.

Will I be Viggo on a horse racing trip towards the ocean once I get on my meds? Nope. It’ll take longer to reach water, but the horse won’t be stopping and going. All of this soapbox discussion to say that I am no longer afraid of the beast that is anxiety. I have a fighter’s chance to handle it shortly, which excites me. It will cost me the box truck route, which hurts a little because I love the window time on the open road that also pulls me away from the warehouse chaos--but that’s only temporary.

For now, I have room to unclutter useless boxes that serve no purpose other than to drive my mind crazy. I’ll reach the ocean eventually, and I won’t be alone.

Thanks for reading, and have a good night.