Laughing Gas

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

So idk if you can read hiragana so I’ll just use English letters. There are 4 ways to say you care about somebody in Japanese with increasing degrees of intimacy. Suki is like “I like sushi” type loose feeling. Also used for crushes or “I’d like to ask that person out.” Daisuki is literally “like a lot” and is used for “I love sushi” or “I really like this person” but tends to get translated as “I love you” which is pretty correct. Couples use it for each other

Next up is aishiteru and that’s. Hoo. Boy howdy. That’s te amo levels of intimate. You say that like before you propose, when you’re married, etc. It’s more like “I’m in love with you” and it’s very special. You won’t ever hear this used outside of very private moments between irl couples. I haven’t even seen it used in fiction honestly. And then there’s the big dog

The K word as my wife and I call it. He’s half Japanese and he has never said this to me despite us being literally married and we started dating my senior year of hs which was six and a half years ago. I’ve used this with him MAYBE thrice IF that often. I’ve never seen or heard it used literally ever is how special and intimate this phrase is. Not to totally and completely undersell this but it’s like a “once in a lifetime, the only person who could ever hold my heart” kind of intimate expression of love. It’s whispered on your deathbed to your lover of 65 years special. It’s koishiteru and you DO NOT use that word lightly if ever. It ties your soul directly to someone else’s with just a few sounds

I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:

Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.

Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.

Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.

In this case:

“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”

“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”

*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*

“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”

1) Even someone who’s working could be here on a migrant (or other sort of) visa (hey, there are a few thousand per year, and *someone*’s got to get them, right?) or could be waiting for their case to resolve in immigration court, after having come to America to join a born or naturalized American family member. 

2) Even people who are working improperly could have come into the country legally – and just overstayed their visa or be violating the conditions of their visa, and you have no idea what the niggly little regulations that govern that might be. 

3) If a law enforcement officer asks you about a neighbor/friend/etc., take this moment to remind them that, unlike them, you cannot ask a random person off the street for their ID and be entitled to a response. 

4) Even if someone has told you that they are undocumented, you still don’t know, do you? Humans lie all the time. How could you know for sure? You can’t, because they can’t prove that they have a lack of papers. Just because you haven’t seen papers doesn’t mean they don’t exist! 

5) Don’t ever talk to cops in general. Why are you talking to a cop? Stop that, as soon as it is safe and feasible. 

Love,

I just said, “we don’t work here??” She got mad and was like “Are you sure?” so I went “Are you stupid..?” and carried on shopping

this lady came up to me and asked what tv’s were the best (which like, you couldn’t ask someone in that department in the first place ? i was on the other side of the store ?), to which i explained that i don’t work at best buy. she got really pissy and kept demanding i help her and i was like i ? don’t ? work ? here ? i ? don’t ? know ?

she threatened to get “my” manager to which i had no response because again, i don’t work there. they’re not my managers. i just kinda said “okay…?”, and she really went and found a manager and brought him over to where i was just tryna find a laptop.

she starts telling him what happened, and he was like “ma'am,,, this kid doesn’t work here. he’s not one of our employees.”

she claimed that i should have helped her anyways, and that she’d be giving their store “a very bad review”

During this conversation, she asks me if I’m in school, and I say yes. I tell her about how exams went, as they were near that period, and told her I had a Biology exam that was over genetics. And she looks me straight in the eyes, with seriousness of a heart attack being read in every wrinkle of her white soccer mom face, and says: “Oh, I’m a Christian, I don’t believe in genetics.”

Flabbergasted. My eyes do that spinny rainbow thing that Apple computers do when theyre buffering. A second goes by. I’ve gone through all stages of grief at this point, but haven’t reached acceptance. I have to say something, I have to say SOMETHING. If I just stare at her through this, she’ll know I think she’s fucking dumb and she might get angry, and I don’t need that. Two seconds have gone by. I have stopped scanning groceries at this point, and am just being violently shot back and forth between two sections of the galaxy. I can feel my body taking leave of my soul. Three seconds. I have to say something. 

Unless you assume the universe is infinite in which case this is really null and void (haha)