Bitter

By Alina Giri

[Anxious feelings are always there - it’s our responsibility to choose how we cope with them]

Readers, we have been scared enough for a long now, and what did it do to us? -Nothing. We all tend to have feelings and emotions well; we are human, duh! And sometimes, those feelings make us feel like life is dark, and there is no hope. I am here to say that that is completely normal as a growing teenager. We feel scared and unhappy. I have been experiencing the same thing for a long time now. 
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I have social anxiety. The worst thing was that I never knew I had a severe problem with fear until the first day of grade seven, when I could not say hey to one of my classmates. A sudden voice inside me told me you were wrong, and I guess it was genuine fear of opening up to people. I don't even know what causes that fear in me, because I am sure the doctor took me out of my mom's belly very healthy. After 20,20, everything seemed to change. Well yeah, we had to wear a mask and all, but not only that, something just randomly changed. I knew that voice inside me was eating me alive. Every day, I was surprised by my act of just not being comfortable around people I felt most comfortable with before. It just made me sadder. I felt like I jumped and sank into a deep wellbore of anxious feelings. I shared such issues with some of my friends, and I was relieved when they said; Me too. So I realised it was normal. 

Until yesterday, I started looking for solutions to my fear. But the sad thing was, I have come to understand that feeling will always exist within me, and I came to realise I just had to focus on the good. Create more happy memories and let the fear decay deep in my heart so that it will never return. Fortunately, I started reading Wake Up to the joy of you' by Agapi. It is a great book. It helped me to cope with anxieties and find myself through. It helped me to find joy. For a fact, I knew if I went to bed happily, I would wake up in a good mood, so I always let the book lie on my table beside my bed. Before going to sleep, I always read. It worked. I felt better and remember this: things will go so much worse before getting better. 

The advice I would want to give to my friends out there is that read the book and express your thoughts through a journal because that worked for me. Likewise, writing poems helped me find peace within myself. So use your talents to cope with your stress. I run or play soccer, and it is a great distraction. You have to know yours, too. Also, remember the anxious feelings inside us are just distractions from the good things. I know it's easy for people to quote that, but it is.