Anxiety 1
Written to calm my nerves today. And Fuck you [insert teachers name here]
How do we recognise when we are overwhelmed? When our anxiety and stimuli reach an isolated high causing an overload; the point where we choose to act on it, to avoid that place, not do this around that person. Why do we need to reach the pinnacle of our anxiety to act on it? To do anything other than shut down until the bottle inside us explodes.
Glass shatters everywhere. A figurative bomb goes off in your head. The amygdala screams, waking your sleeping emotions into a thunder of unnatural action.
And then the aftermath. 5 minutes later; your emotions are ripe, weeds dug up in a turned field. That count of overthinking states every possible solution to eliminate the root of our problem. Consistently we see ourselves overwhelmed in a certain place, we decide to cut it out of our schedule-don’t go to this class, walk the other way to this room.
What if we can recognise how we are overwhelmed by the overthinking in the aftermath? If the goal is to eliminate the culmination of the day then that doesn't do much to help us. Maybe we need to learn to appreciate our anxiety more severely. And treat it like it is worse than it is so that logical action comes before anything rash.
Why shall we get punished for a mistake? If my number one priority is my mental health then it seems irrelevant to waste a day in consequence that will not teach me anything? If I learn how to do it and what I need to learn is how to separate myself from the root of my anxiety then I should do it. I do not feel comfortable or safe in the kitchen at school. It is loud, overwhelming and anxiety inducing. The solution is to not go there.
This room is too quiet, sterile. I would even call it clinical. The hum of the air conditioner and the click of someone's keyboard next door at the only consistent sounds—dragging you into insanity as you question why you should be here. I could just go home. Yes I did say I would rather be at school than at home but at home I have freedom, in this room I do not feel I do. I would even say I have freedom in a classroom, despite the people in a classroom being the only thing that doesn't make it feel like here.
My stance on labels for things dependent on psychology has always been akin to that of Will Wood, a singer/songwriter. In his song Marsha, Thankk you for the dialects but I need you to leave he explores themes of neurodivergency being something that can be solved, like a disease and once it has a name it's something you did wrong that medication didn't “fix” it. I will not pick apart the song too much though.
Despite this I still feel I can say ”I have autism”, and wow I’ve just decided I don’t treat my school accounts google docs with enough respect to believe even slightly that this is private. Regards - stuff you.
I have read much about privacy online. One of the first privacy laws ever passed was in Germany, because the state wanted to do a census on its people. This was unheard of at the time, especially in a country that just 20 years prior had been collecting data on the jews and using that to ensure the holocaust. The law was passed to soothe the population's nerves on having a bunch of information about them recorded and kept in some far off office in another city.
Decades later and giving up personal information and letting the internet glare into your life is common, even expected by many. However there is a significant difference between data given consensually and data collected discreetly. It is not obvious that or even if there is a keylogger on these school laptops. However I still have to refrain myself from writing what I would in a random text file on my personal laptop that will eventually be lost forever when I decide to try a new linux distro. I have to ensure—when in a state of distress and anxiety—that I do not share stuff I am not comfortable sharing with people through my coping mechanism.
I trust even if I question my trust that any equivalent of “spyware” on these computers was outlined and stated in the schools IT policy which I do not remember anything from and cannot find a copy of at the current point in time.