First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety—A Personal Journey Through Anxiety and Self-Discovery

by Sarah Wilson

In my experience, living with a wobbly mind is akin to being charged with carrying around a large, shallow bowl filled to the brim with water for the rest of your life. You have to tread super carefully so as not to slosh it all out. So you must learn to walk steadily and gently. And be super aware of every movement around you, ready to correct a little bit of off-balance-ness here, a tilt to the left there. This is just the way it is. Living this way requires vigilance and is about constant refinement. If you waiver and get unsteady, the water starts to slosh. And if you don’t bring yourself back quick enough, the sloshing gathers momentum and, well, you lose it. Right? And, just to really drag out this metaphor, this means you then have to return to the source and fill it back up again. Which is tiring. So tiring. And just to push it a touch further: to carry the bowl steadily means walking in a pretty straight line. Which means there will be scenarios and environments and people that simply are not conducive to your journey. They’re too bumpy or jarring or wobbly. Or crooked. Me, I can’t do late nights at bars and I struggle around people who live loud and fast.