Enough is Enough

By Nada Wahba

Senior Online Editor

I woke up today with a stone in my stomach. Using the word “today” might be vague and confusing because you, reading this, won’t know which day I was referring to.

But I didn’t think much of it because today is applied to every single day.

Writing this op-ed is terrifying, I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve in a way I have never done before. In light of mental health awareness month, I pushed myself to write this piece.

The stone in my stomach that I wake up with every morning is almost always a result of the previous night.

It feels as though I wake up a different person every morning, not because my anxiety renews me but it forces me to try a different method of dealing with such long relentless nights to silence my obsessive thoughts.

It puts me on a different path every day, one where I can’t anticipate what’s going to happen, or when the next breakdown is triggered, or how I’m going to manage to deal with it and come out in one piece, or whatever have you.

“This is how we’ll do things now,” I tell myself every morning.

I’ve come to dread nightfall. It conditioned me to believe it’s a precursor to the start of my obsessions.

It goes like this: I’m in my room, attempting to get work done then all I hear is “you’re not good enough”.

I start moving around my room in attempts to silence these obsessions, I play music really loudly and move along to whatever song comes on and I close my eyes.

Breathe.

The thoughts get louder and they consume the deafening music, this is when I surrender myself to my obsessions because I know It’s one of those nights where nothing can be done.

The obsessions win over all attempts to ground them.

I start feeling the anxiety building up in the pit of my stomach, crawling up and making its way to my chest where everything suddenly feels compromised.

I find my feet automatically moving around the room, pacing back and forth with no explanation. No purpose.

Colors of obsessive thoughts switch amongst themselves until they settle on something that will surely send me spiraling.

Most of those nights I’d run out of breath from constantly pacing around my room because my anxiety wouldn’t leave me still.

But then something happens and everything starts to slow down, signaling that maybe I figured out a way of defeating my own obsessions into submission.

My feet retract to my body and remain stagnant, my chest loosens up. My obsessions start to quiet down, leaving me on the floor with white noise for the rest of the night.