what 'impossible' means to me
I'm sure many of you reading, just like me, have experienced stress at some point in your life.
Stress isn't always a bad thing - for some of you, stress will be the factor that gets you to start and finish a 2000 word essay the night that it's due. However, for others, stress can quickly turn a new face. It can grow and morph into something darker; something crippling; something overwhelming.
I know that I personally have seen this face - in fact, at times it has felt like this face has replaced my own. For me, the tiniest sliver of stress in my day can quickly strangle me and before I know it I don't know whether to run or hide or cry.
I wasn't diagnosed with anxiety until recently compared to the span of my short almost-nineteen years. I remember the first time I saw a psychologist, and my desperation to 'make it stop'. I can't identify the exact moment, but I remember a shift in my perception of the world at some point - so much of the world I saw around me was filled with pain, and it seemed I was the only one who saw it. I could see it in the faces of the people who sat cold and hungry against the walls of the supermarket; in the eyes of people who tried to talk to me but couldn't get the words out; in the people on TV suffering from natural disaster and war... the pain was endless.
And then one day, out of the blue, everyone else's pain became my own. It built up and up and without anyone - not even myself - understanding what had happened, I became a person who collapsed when they couldn't get their hair right; who began throwing up their lunch in the school bathrooms; who began to doubt whether the suffering around me was really worth existing for.
I was in 10th grade when I had my first anxiety attack. I remember a tightness collecting in my throat and how I couldn't breathe anymore. I remember hearing the electricity humming in the walls and the sounds of 5 different voices and 6 different car engines and the blood pumping behind my eyes and all I could think was that I wanted to hide in a corner or under the table or something.
Often my way of dealing with these attacks was to cry. My response to this 'fight or flight' reaction associated with anxiety was to do neither, and freeze.
Since then, I have relapsed every now and again. An obvious trend is that my anxiety flares up whenever I'm in a time of immense pressure or stress - and obviously, considering I'm studying Medicine, much of my education has been a high stress situation.
I think as a younger student I held the common misconception that to get A+ I had to be perfect. I thought that the most successful people were the ones that studied every spare moment, got 100% on every assignment, were naturally smart and memorized the dictionary on the weekends for fun - and this belief pushed me to behave a certain way. When Year 12 began I studied every second I could, trying to get every assignment finished the day that I got it – but the truth was, I had never been so mentally unhealthy.
Anyone close to me could tell you that I am an ‘all or nothing’ kind of person. I either eat the whole block of chocolate in one go, or not a single bite. And when it came to school, I was no different. However, despite putting every ounce of energy I had into trying to reach that awe-inspiring, perfect 100%, when it came to mid-years I just collapsed. I went through two entire terms without feeling happy or relaxed, and when I was trying to do something fun, inside I was frantically pushing down the panic that rose with each hour I didn’t study. I did 9 straight hours of studying each day on the weekends and despite my parents’ pleas to stop, and take a break, eat or exercise or anything else, I ran myself dry and in my last mid-year exam this resulted in a complete breakdown. When you build your entire world on marks that only really reflect 3 hours of your life, a fail can feel like the end of the world – because, to you, it is the world. And after my results at mid-years, I had to accept that perhaps what I was striving for wasn’t really perfection, but for the impossible.
If you look up the definition of 'impossible' in most dictionaries, it will tell you something along the lines of 'unable to happen or be achieved' - nevertheless, after years of striving for something impossible, what I can say is this...
Impossible does not mean it will never be achieved. It means that something has to CHANGE before it can.
And change I did.
So when it came to the end of year exam period, I took breaks and I went to ‘social events’ and I watched Season 2 of Stranger Things because lets be honest, it came out at literally the most inconvenient time of year.
But that being said, I also studied. I studied hard. When I had the energy I used it well, but when I was so exhausted that the contraption I'd created with my pen, ruler and rubber was the most entertainment I’d had in months – I stopped.
In the words of my incredibly emotionally intelligent mother, "Manage your energy, not your time."
When you have a base of happiness and friendship in your life, when your parents don’t have to force you to take a break or smile, when you give your time to others and experience their happiness with them, a number or letter on a piece of paper will not define you. If you don’t get the marks you were hoping for, you can look forward with confidence, strive to do better next time and acknowledge that you have worth and intelligence that these exams do not measure.
And if you do happen to do "okay", you can take it as one more thing to feel grateful for.
So to my readers - never stop striving for the impossible, change and change and change again, and never be afraid to see the pain in the world (as long as you do something to relieve it).
Love, Monty x