Wrinkled, but still legible

my ongoing recovery from control

Entry from Day 13. New port, same story: Proving anxiety wrong.

Slow jet-lag is a real thing. Setting your clocks forward an hour every night as you creep across the Atlantic Ocean plays a trick on your circadian rhythm, and because of that, I have had five sleepless nights. I mean, the night slept soundly, but I kept watch. By the time daylight arrived, my protesting body finally gave in—though it grumbled all the way down into sleep.

But today my body was blessed with eight hours of sleep! And so I woke, ready to take on the day. The key, I believe, was forcing myself to get sun and sustenance as soon as my feet hit the floor, telling my body in no uncertain terms what rhythm it would now march to today.

The body is a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s like it has a mind of its own. And just like my dogs seem to know the time of day without even realizing what a clock is, my body tells me the time of day regardless of how far east we have come, quarreling with Greenwich Mean Time like two people who swore they’d stop talking about politics.

This is the story of my life as I’m unfolding it from the wadded-up state it’s been crammed into for the last 20 years. Wrinkled, but still legible. The story reads that my body thinks it knows what’s best. Thinks it has a solid understanding of time, of hunger, of danger, of all the things that it tries to protect me from, and help me with. But like a toddler wielding wisdom like a toy hammer and “helping” me work on a project, it mostly just makes my job harder. Its “good intentions” mess up more than they fix.

The key, then, is the same as it has been for my anxiety: to stop letting something with the logic and wisdom of a toddler, or a dog, determine my actions, emotions, or thoughts. Hence, making myself sit in the sun to get the point across to my body or my mind, or whichever it is who thinks they are in charge. Which again is the theme of this spiritual guantlet.

So today, after getting my morning sun and eggs, I was ready to take on Málaga, Spain. As we walked off the ship, I could see the pier was a lot longer than any we had walked before, and my heart skipped a beat in the same way you stop walking when you get an important text you want to read. Gulp! You mean I have to start out this day walking 2 miles into town? What if the heat is too much? What if I can’t even make it to the end of this 1.5-mile pier? All the stupid questions my overprotective brain wants answers to and wants them now!

But I know the drill from yesterday. Call a spade a spade, or in this case, an anxious thought an anxious thought. Who would have thought that just naming the thing would have a beneficial effect on who was in charge?

See previously, it was anxiety pretending to be logic who planned by day. But apparently, taking the disguise off of anxiety exposes it for the false brain (can you even call it a brain?) it is. No brain at all, just a scared puppy wanting to go back to its couch and sleep.

So, disguise thrown to the curb, I took a deep breath (or two) and admired the setting. Gorgeous yachts, one $300 million dollar one owned by the heiress of Walmart. Moorish-inspired buildings. Marble streets.

Yes! $300 million and Marble streets.

I’ve never walked someplace where they put so much effort into what was underfoot.

The Kaos, annual operating cost $20-30 million a year. Some people sail chaos. Others try to quiet it.

The mission this time was to do more than walk around. It was, one, to go into a historic building. And, two, to eat something, to risk stepping off the polished sidewalk and into a potential trap. Because that’s what anxiety insinuates, attempting something new is—a dangerous trap.

You might wonder what kind of haunted house has put up shop in my mind, but what I’m sharing with you isn’t as obvious as the ghouls and chainsaw massacres that make you scream at Halloween. No, what I’m describing to you is something that is more nuanced, more invisible to the untrained eye than that. More like a puppet master. Or a hypnotist telling me what to do while I’m completely oblivious to their voice.

What I’m describing to you is the filter that lies over all of my thoughts. Remember the video that circulated during COVID, of the man on a business Zoom meeting unknowingly wearing the dog filter on his face? Well, that’s an illustration of what my mind sees. I have for decades looked at the world through the filter of anxiety, without realizing I was even wearing a filter. But unlike an Instagram filter that shows my face to the world, this filter shows me the world. And this filter is designed to make new experiences, or situations I have little to no control of, look dangerous.

It does this by predicting the future. My fortune teller of a brain reads the tarot cards of my day and sees the angel of death. It sees misfortune, it sees fatigue, an inability to find my way home, terror at every port. It sees a world in which it’s just safer to stay at home and stay in control, as it controls my life. (Oh, the irony!)

That’s some messed-up stuff. Isn’t it? But that’s my best way of describing it. I’m well aware that very few people see the world through the filter of anxiety this way, but I am also aware that 99% of people suffer from some kind of anxiety in their lives, and so maybe this metaphor will open the eyes of one person who doesn’t want to live with their anxiety filter applied anymore. If so, welcome to AA (Anxiety Anonymous). My name is Hayley, and it’s been 1 day since I was last anxious, but that doesn’t mean I’m falling off the wagon today!)

So, taking what I learned at the last two ports, at Málaga, I named my anxiety. Refused to give up and return to my room, AND we visited a cathedral, and had some lunch. Oh, and boba tea! Don’t forget the tea. Tea across Europe. That should be my European adventure subtitle.

Anyway, I would say that Málaga was a success! Was I sweating and fainting? Yes. Did it feel like I have felt for decades? Yes. But did I let it control me? No! And that’s the victory of AA, you may have the urge, but you don’t give into it; instead, you turn around and do the opposite.