Fine lines 

By: YGBO

It wasn’t until college, when I would find myself skipping meals rather than going to a dining hall alone, that I fully realized the existence of social anxieties in my life. They were no longer ghosts of someone else’s past but my own fine-faced demons that lured me in with the promise of comfort. They are crippling and inconvenient, but sadly this anxiety is not as easily defined or construed as being averse to uncomfortable situations of loneliness. It can also mean self-fulfilled avoidance of socialization, isolating yourself from situations in which you should be comfortable but choose to recluse from. I oftentimes failed to leave the protective walls of my freshman suite without someone familiar, and a year later, I found little pleasure in leaving the safe, quiet space of my hallway single. I wanted nothing more than to be stripped of obligations that required my presence away from the comfort of my own desk… and my studies… and my bed… and my window… and so I allowed myself to pretend obligations to myself and to my own well-being were the optional ones. These demons stay around to play every now and then, but they have begun to respect the person I have chosen to embrace. Afraid of tipping me too far out of their grasps, they linger within arm’s reach to invite me to stay with them a moment here and there, but they never have the chance to pull me much closer than that these days. I came to recognize the things that kept me comfortable before were not always on my side but rather agents of suppression that became selfish with the time they spent with me. They had to let me go and let me live and find what caring for myself truly meant, that worry and anxiousness were not meant to be dictators over my joy… and it is still very much, complicated… the fine lines and delicate webs that keep me, keep us, in a perpetual balancing act. Yet, they can. And they will if we will them to. If we learn to tread lovingly in our own favor and to listen, not to the selfish voices of anxiety and melancholy, but to that which emanates from our very own self-understanding and to those who understand ourselves better than we may.