I set off on this journey to document my thoughts on a
subject familiar to millions, foreign to billions, but yet specifically unique
and personal to the individual. The accounts that follow are written from my
perspective and opinions derived from a lifetime of addiction, loss,
abandonment, self-destruction, insecurity, dependency, depression, and the
seemingly never-ending - no escaping prison in your mind that is, social
anxiety; and my tiresome attempt to overcome and channel a parasitic
relationship into a healthy commensalism symbiotic relationship with the many
devils dancing on my shoulders. I hope to successfully articulate myself to
accurately portray the thoughts in my mind; exactly as I hear them in my head.
And I feel the best way to achieve this is by writing and documenting my thoughts
and experiences on paper because - now, I don’t know if this is common of
people suffering from social anxiety but, somewhere, between my mind and my
mouth there is some monumental fuckery afoot, some crossed wires or a glitch in
the matrix, I don’t know. But during an episode, the words expelled from my
mouth do not accurately represent or reflects the man (or the internal voice)
in my mind in any way shape or form; not all the time mind you, but plenty
enough for me to label it as “extremely frustrating”. And all the while, with each episode, this
slowly chips away at my soul and flattens the self-esteem. To add insult to
injury this always happens around the people you least want as witnesses. Like
a crush that you want to date, or an evil stepmother who experiences great
pleasure in your downfall and revels in your embarrassment. This is the crap
that can happen when you are plagued with social anxiety, and it sucks. So I
also hope to lift the veil " even if only slightly " and shed some light and
understanding on not only anxiety but addiction and dependency too. Addiction
is a word thrown around far too much and used instead of another word”
dependency” that would define the context in a far more accurate manner; and so
(unsurprisingly) has lead to confusion, misunderstanding, and a rotten stigma
attached to the term, which in turn is attached to the person, a human being,
like me, like you, or a friend or family member who we hold dear and in high
respect. Addiction and dependency are
not the same things.