“Anxious people”

[Trigger warnings & spoiler alerts: loss, grief, pain, anxiety; PTSD; long-COVID; a couple details about Fredrik’s Backman’s novel “Anxious people”]

Once again, I’m going to use Fredrik Backman’s words (from his book Anxious people) to express my current emotions and feelings I have already had several other times in the past — that horrible, terrifying anxiety that comes from loss, pain, sadness, loneliness: 

“[…] Unfortunately I think most people would still get more sympathy from their colleagues and bosses at work if they show up looking rough one morning and say ‘I’m hung over’ than if they say ‘I’m suffering from anxiety’. But I think we pass people in the street every day who feel the same way as you and I, many of them just don’t know what it is. Men and women going around for months having trouble breathing and seeing doctor after doctor because they think there’s something wrong with their lungs. All because it’s so damn difficult to admit that something else is… broken. That’s it’s an ache in our soul, invisible lead weighs in our blood, an indescribable pressure in our chest. Our brains are lying to us, telling us we’re going to die. But there’s nothing wrong with our lungs. […]”

So many times I have felt that, the “ache in my soul”, the “invisible lead in my blood”, the “indescribable pressure in my chest”. And I’m feeling it in these days more terribly intense than ever, as I did a couple other times during the month of July. 

Loss induces these feelings in me — the departure of someone I love; the separation from a place where I feel at home; the grief from a missed opportunity. 

And now that I’ve done the methacholine challenge test with no evident effects, I know for a fact that it’s not asthma for me. It was a reasonable doubt after my severe COVID in March 2020 and consequent long-COVID. But my lungs are clear, have been clear for years now, and while I most likely have some form of “performance anxiety” and/or EILO when doing certain types of exercise or races, it is mainly in my head. Be it PTSD from my COVID or the traumatic effects of abandonment or attachment issues from my childhood, I am one of those “anxious people” of whom Fredrik Backman writes in his lovely novel. I’m one of the ones who don’t jump off the bridge, one of the ones who wear themselves out to dampen the pain. 

But eventually I will sit with it, walk with it, once it’s ready to be endured, once it’s bearable and can be faced.