It hurts. It always fucking hurts.
Social anxiety (disorder) just fucks your entire life. Every relationship and situation. It doesn't just make you passive. It makes you submissive and obedient even when you shouldn't be. It scares you. It scares you out of your speech and movement. It stops you from saying hello to kind people. It stops you from protecting yourself from all sorts of negativity. It turns every interaction into a fear response. It makes you want to run. It freezes you in place. It puts you on people pleasing autopilot. It stops you from communicating. Your needs? Irrelevant. Your wants? You're selfish. Your boundaries? Nonexistent. Your love? No one wants it.
You don't look people in the eye. You don't respond to people talking to you. You don't press send. You don't learn skills. Your social and personal growth is stunted. It stops you from acknowledging issues and people. It allows people to walk all over you. It makes you watch while life passes you by. You lose the people you love. You miss out on opportunities. You long for normality. You find you are not enough, which makes you too much. You absolutely hate yourself. You want to turn back the clock and fix everything you believe you have ever done wrong. Every mistake is a major fuck up on your behalf. Nothing you do ever feels like you got it right. You unsettle everyone around you because they can't read you, and it's not fun because you just keep thinking about how awful you are for not knowing how to respond or communicate.
You always look sad, scared, angry, or indifferent. You want to participate, but you don't. You want to laugh, but you don't remember how. You want to express yourself, but you mentally, emotionally, and physically can't. Your throat burns with unsaid, choked on words. Your muscles strain as you statue.
You're crying silently in a crowded room, and somehow no one even knows. You're sobbing loudly in your bedroom when you get home. Why didn't anyone notice? Thank god no one noticed. How do I fix me, you beg. You take medication. It doesn't work. You're the same. You're hallucinating. Or... it does work. But it doesn't cure you of who you were, what you've become, or how unnatural the world still feels even if the anxiety has tamed some.
You are not normal. You want to be normal, but normal people are ignorant. You think maybe it's okay because it made you more understanding to struggle. At least it made you a better person on the inside. Oh, now you feel haunted and ashamed for thanking your mental abuse. Trauma isn't what makes you a good person, but you don't know who you are without it.
Social anxiety simultaneously says, "Move on, already. It happened," and "It's all your fault so don't you fucking forget it." You never forget it. Any of it. The worst of your memories flash before your eyes. Something in you dies as you open the fridge or search for your socks. A thought like bullets turning menial tasks into a death you could have prevented had you only conventionally interacted that one time back when. There is no safe place to breathe with social anxiety. Not even when you're alone. Wherever you are, it has its way of shrouding you, with hands pushing down on your shoulders, shrinking you so you'll cave in.
People tell you they understand with the very same voice they take for granted. People get angry and treat your silence as a purposeful action made to deliberately affront them. People rarely know what to do with you. You are outcasted. Isolated. It runs deeper within you.
One day you find that you are more confident than you used to be. You use your voice more, but when it matters most you feel you fall short. You keep trying. Life happens and you regress. Life happens and you strive forward. Your best never feels good enough in comparison to the people around you. You wish you hadn’t wasted so much time. You have to remind yourself that your past of mental confusion and grief wasn’t a choice. This is not the life you chose, but it doesn't matter. You wake up again. You try again. You always fail even when you succeed, but now, you have empathy for yourself.
It hurts. It always fucking hurts, but you've come this far.
