Today was the first in four days that I took my prescribed medication for my anxiety. I didn’t take it because I felt especially anxious, I took it mostly because I felt like I “should,” and to see if it would quell the headaches I have been getting as of late.
This is a remarkable occurrence, because usually when I don’t take my medicine I find myself depressed and stressed about the future. Seeing how I don’t have a job, health insurance or source of income at the moment, I should have spent the past few days freaking out but instead, I was oddly calm.
So this left me wondering: where is the anxiety that has followed me around like an abusive ex-boyfriend for the past 30 years? Did it disappear? Is this a temporary lapse?
I wouldn’t be the first person to have seemingly had their anxiety managed or “cured” through traveling (see this wonderful post “On Anxiety and Travel” by Lauren at “Neverending Footsteps,”) but before setting off on this journey it was certainly something I didn’t expect would happen to me; after all I have been taking 40mg of citalopram every day for almost a decade and have been in and out of therapy since I was a child. I have been lead to believe that what is wrong with me is chemical and only managed through modern medicine.
But it seems New Zealand wants to prove the doctors wrong.
I think the anxiety is lessening, if not all gone thanks to a lot of things. For one, I feel safer in New Zealand than I ever have in my life. Honestly, I do things here I would never do in the States alone: I go to bars, I go latin dancing, and even walk home alone at 3 in the morning and don’t worry about my well-being. As a woman living in America, I have always worried about being mugged, or worse raped when going somewhere solo. Here, that nagging fear doesn’t exist.
But I know it is not just this feeling of safety that has my mind relaxed. I have shed the burden of television news, a career which by nature fosters anxiety. It is hard to see the positive and beauty in the world when you spend your day immersed in the worst parts of it. In news, you live and breathe every terrorist attack, every shooting, and every death as it develops. For 8 hours or more, you are immersed in negativity, all the while forced to find ways to make each story, however awful it is, “unique,” “creative” and “important” to viewers. You have to get it on the air “first and fast” so there is no time for you to feel or process. You don’t get to do that until you get home; so even when you’re not at work, you are still dealing with it.
Strangely, there was a time when I thought I would miss this career. And while there are parts of it I will always love, I do not see myself returning to that world anytime soon. Life is so much better when now that I can choose how much information to digest each day; I am still informed, but I am no longer burdened.
Similarly, I think my anxiety is easing because I am doing what I want for the first time in my life, instead of what society told me I had to do. I don’t know where my next dollar is coming from, but I know it is going to be doing something where I feel as if I am adding positivity to my day and to those of others, instead of taking away from it. I have taken control of my destiny, and when you are doing what you want and what you love, stress is much less likely to weigh you down.
So is my anxiety gone? I don’t know. But I know I am feeling more at ease now than I ever did in my life. I know I will probably continue to take less and less of my prescription and replace it with things like meditation and taking chances.