Quitting to Survive: How Anxiety Shaped Me

The first time I remember quitting anything was in fifth grade. I was just nine years old when I decided to try a musical instrument and the flute was my choice. That first year, I still couldn’t even manage a whistle while my classmates pranced around, giddy about their ability to spit out “Hot Cross Buns.” Suddenly I was ten, flustered with envy and found no reason to continue on with the pity party.

So I quit.

I packed that flute up and said “no thanks, mom.”

But then something magical happened: my mother wouldn’t take it back.

I didn’t touch that flute all summer, burying it in the corner behind stacks of jewel cases that held my favorite CDs. I figured that by avoiding it, I wouldn’t have to think about how terrible I was in comparison to my classmates. Turns out, that’s exactly what happened. I distanced myself from the instrument, my peers and quite frankly, got out of my own head. I had no intention of picking that flute up again but it wasn’t long before I did.

The following year, something clicked. Though I’m not sure when, why or how, I reassembled the flute and fell head over heels in love with that instrument. I practiced constantly and made my way up to first chair, landing solos, scoring scholarships to music summer camp and being honored the John Philip Sousa award before entering high school.

It wasn’t until I was well into my twenties that I learned what anxiety and depression truly looked like. Though signs of these were woven deeply into the journals that I kept since that ten year old girl buckled at the weight of her insecurities, I didn’t recognise them in myself. I was told I was “dramatic” and “over-emotional” so I swallowed those opinions as facts. Though those descriptions were not wrong, they disregarded and pushed aside issues that were never addressed. Growing up, mental health was simply not a topic.

So I turned to quitting.

Recently, I’ve been reading articles about how Millennials are “ghosting” their jobs. It seems to be a much more common practice now not to give any length of notice when leaving. I’m not proud to say that this disappearing act was something I displayed on multiple occasions in my teens and twenties with companies who employed me. I certainly wouldn’t gloat these days about how walking out on a job gave me a rush when I felt I was being treated poorly but honestly, I don’t regret a moment of it, especially in cases of exploitation and sexual harassment by management. They didn’t care about me and when it became clear, I wouldn’t waste another breath on them. Once that anxiety was triggered, I was out.

While I don’t feel remorse for walking away from any situation that I didn’t feel was right for me at the time, I do question how many times I may have ghosted myself because of anxiety.

But if it’s worked this far…do I just keep quitting?

What does anxiety even look like for someone like me?

If I’m being completely transparent, I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing regularly and I became aware of this some time ago. We trick ourselves often and I get nervous time and time again that I’ve mastered self-fuckery so well that I can’t smell the very bullshit that I create.

Do you ever get sick of hearing your own voice?

I don’t mean that in a literal sense…and funny enough, I never thought the tone of my voice would make me cringe less than the incessant and annoying maintenance that my soul needs. I am exhausting.

I almost re-wrote an entire page in my private journal just to appease the perfectionist clawing her way inside of me. And don’t confuse it — she’s not clawing her way out; she’s shredding her way in. The perfectionist isn’t passive. She is aggressive and will show no mercy until she is dripping in validation.

And then there is the paranoia. It comes about the minute it starts sounding like I have a personality disorder. Or perhaps I’m not paranoid…just intrinsically attuned to my own illness.

But this grimacing demon exists in all of us…right? Another day wasted, losing time and sanity through endless scrolling, prolonging the cycle of negativity. We’ve all been there. We’ve all felt it…but somehow we still feel isolated in this self-perpetuated misery.

Perhaps it’s time to quit striving for perfection. Time to quit fighting the anxiety to accept that it’s just a part of who we are.

Anxiety is just a part of who I am.