There are changes in life that one can see coming so far ahead that one can prepare for them, or at least work on adjusting for impact before the big bang, sort of like a tuck and roll maneuver only instead of jumping out a moving vehicle you get to experience the heartache and darkness of life, aaaaaaand then you feel like you've jumped out of a car and tucked and rolled your way to a full stop gaining loads of bruises, broken bones and probable internal hemorrhage :)
Anxiety is something I've dealt with officially since I was fourteen or fifteen, to this day I live with it and cohabitate with it sometimes.
A few weeks ago I started feeling this horrible anxiety about what would be left of me after someone I love dies. It was a very bizarre feeling like I was a pebble washing on the shore and becoming eroded from grinding against the rocks aka my problems, disillusionment and personal tragedies.
This went on for some weeks and finally today I understood what the root of the anxiety was, I was able to put into words and understand what my mind was trying to deduce and foresee but couldn't. It was very simple really, my feelings manifested themselves in a phrase that would jump into my mind at unexpected moments: "what will be left of me?", and today I realized that what my mind was realizing is that something so monumental cannot and will not leave one unchanged and unmoved. The anxiety came from the fact that I could not understand what the outcome would be, in my mind at that time I felt like I would lose parts of myself until almost nothing remained, like a person queuing for the amputation of many limbs who would end up a torso and a head and nothing more. But through talking with my friends last night and thinking about that conversation this morning I was able to realize something, this life altering event that is unavoidable and extremely painful had already started to change me and I am not being amputated of my traits and everything that makes me, me; rather those traits are being magnified and amplified ten fold. Therefore there is nothing to fear.
My traits make me a good person, because that is what I strive to be, so any change that comes from huge horrible ordeals and tragedies can only turn me into a better version of myself as long as I chose to do so, and for me it comes naturally.
My personality and traits are not finite commodities that will get destroyed by life, quite the opposite I just change and adjust to the new realities and I can control what I become. There is huge comfort in that and it has killed the overwhelming anxiety of those six words: "what will be left of me?".
