The Anxiety of Waiting

 I hate waiting! I've always have. Even though I made people wait throughout my life which I'm deeply remorseful for. Just how I've been recently told by a strangely loyal visitor of my blog that they've been waiting for me to post for the longest. First of all, I'm still surprised that anybody would actually wait for this blog to get updated. But since I've been learning and training myself to accept compliments and flattery, I think that's super cool and I appreciate their waiting! Though I must clarify the following; it's not that I haven't written anything on this blog since July, it's just that whatever I wrote didn't make it to the publication thus far. It all remained in the drafts section or got sent down to the bin. Like I do with most of my writing. 

With that being said, I think I must publish this post this time whether it ends up decent or utter nonsense. For I know I am not the only person who's agonizingly going through this at this exact period of time. Some call it the fall season. I call it "The Waiting Season". It's the time you wait for the outcome of all the crap you've been applying to and all the interviews you've endured. You see kids and employees around already had their year started but you; a recent graduate, still don't know what's the next step. Waiting for that final list, that final call, that final result ...hits so much differently when you have been amplifying the experience of whatever is you are aspiring to do. You are practically in labor; feeling every cramp and every breath. You memorise the pattern of your exhale-inhale process. You can hear the sound of air coming in and out so loudly that you even look around to see who else is annoyed by it. And who can blame you? It is surely not a pretty sound as it pierces its way out of your lungs hurting the tangled capillaries  inside your tensed chest. Not that you've seen them tangled, but it feels like it anyway. Your limbs on the other hand are either ice-cold or lava-hot. The heat is constantly centering to the core/head or rushing towards the edges. In both cases, it is escaping you, but simply alternating between directions. It is as if the human temperature is saying: "This building is going down I gotta save myself out". The normal in you doesn't want to harmonize with your entity. It is as if you're an alien for a little while. 

Don't even get me started on the endless battles run down in your mind. Missing names and incomplete thoughts are the only result you're sure of. It is an unfair war! You know why? Because you're not in charge of ending it. Any sign or any word could do, but the eternity that rests itself within the couple of days or weeks of waiting, leaves no room for relief. No room for soldier's aid. At this point you may even start wishing for the bad result. I don't even care if I make it, just get back at me for mercy's sake! 

You are losing your mind it feels. Do you walk or sit or lie? Do you bite on your nails or chain your fingers together? Do you finish your chores or leave everything hanging? Do you work on plan B or wait for a dead end to unravel? Do you dissociate yourself from your surrounding or overly merge with it? Asking about everything and everyone for no valid reason other than the fact that you are not in control anymore. Decisions and words are not yours to take. You belong outside or rather, nowhere. 

This is the anxiety of waiting my friends! Or a tedious fraction of what it does to you. The jeering truth of it is, it may not even be about something that significant on rational grounds. It turns you into a wacko outcast because it faces you with the worst thing about death itself! "The Unknown". Fear of the unknown has always been the biggest fears instilled in humans. It only spares the people who manage how it shows in them well enough or those who are too high to care. Or maybe not.

Obviously, there has been no advise or tip given about how to relieve this anxiety because I myself couldn't use one. However, I somehow feel like it temporarily helps to know and define what it does to you. To pay attention to the intricacies of your state under the turbulence of waiting. Not necessarily to stop them, but perhaps to embrace and make peace with them. If the suffering of waiting is invitable, why add up the suffering of rejecting it? Unless suffering twice gives you an inspiration of some sort and you're willing to walk that extra mile like an honorable soldier.  

Peace!

"Le Désespéré" by Gustave Courbet