The All-Consuming Dread of Anxiety
10:45 AM
Sitting outside the Hills Highlands shopping center inside my comfortable, air conditioned car awaiting the job interview I’ve anticipated for weeks now, I find it increasingly harder to breathe. The gracious anger of Window by Fiona Apple playing at a moderately normal volume so as to not alert the people on the outside that I may be experiencing this immense amount of anxiety is one of the few hundred thoughts that have paced through my brain in a matter of seconds.
Why did you wear jeans? Your hair looks unprofessional. I can’t believe you chose this for a job. This looks like shit on a resume. Like you’re gonna get the job. Just give up. You have a shit memory. How are you gonna be a good barista? That woman is staring at you turn the fucking music down. God, you look so massive today.
The last one gets to me. It really just never ends. My mind goes a mile a minute and it gives me a headache. It’s not so much a feeling but rather a change in the way the world perceives me and I it—at least that's how it feels to me. It feels as if the sky is flashing colors of gray and blue, with clouds soaring at incredible speeds. The air conditioning is freezing and my breath is colliding with my sweaty palms. My stomach rolls and twists at the thought of having to sit calmly with whoever this man is while maintaining a “professional” conversation. Nothing about me feels professional. The beads of sweat ever so slowly dripped down the sides of my temple as if I were caught red-handed with a dirty secret. It feels as if the car is being compacted into infinitesimal pieces with me somehow alive inside it, atomized. I have nowhere to escape.
10:47 AM
I keep thinking of what the article I looked up said about these interviews. “Make sure you wear the proper attire and ensure you have questions prepared for the interviewers. Try to make yourself stand out. Don’t say…”. Shit I forgot what it told me not to say. What if I say something stupid and he stops the interview? What if everyone in the store stops what they’re doing and looks directly at me, as if I have some massive fucking pimple on my face? God what a cringey thought. Stop it Ben, no one is going to be looking at you, just breathe.
I focus on my breathing for a few seconds. In—hold for 5 seconds—out. I repeat the process until it feels like the walls are no longer closing in on me (sort of). I tell myself that this is only one interview and it will all be fine. My brain doesn’t listen. It never does. Something in me tells me my life is on the line and I physically and mentally freeze.
10:50 AM
The song switches to SOS by Rihanna and I immediately skip it. Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles, definitely not. Snakeskin by Rina Sawayama. I listen for a couple seconds until the song picks up, elevating my anxiety, and I skip to the next song. 10:51 AM—“Fuck,” I think to myself, “Come on just one last song.” The Melting of the Sun by St. Vincent comes on with a glorious and exciting beat and something in me feels relaxed—odd given how the song is. “Shut up,” I tell myself. “Don't think about that.” Instead my mind drifts to the clouds in the sky. “This song is literally about the-” LiterallyWhatTheFuckIsWrongWithMyBrain. I contemplate as I bang my hands on the steering wheel and look up through the moon roof of my car. Just breathe, I tell myself. In and out. In and out.
10:53 AM
I roll down the window while lowering the sound of the music. I still don’t want anyone perceiving me at this moment. I wish to be completely alone with my terrorizing thoughts (so incredibly healthy I know). I hear the distant sound of two women talking but I can’t make out what they’re saying. The rolling sound of tires elegantly bashing lightly onto speedbumps. The small mechanical chime of bells as doors in the strip mall open and close. My eyes begin to shut and I try to remember what it was like to not have these thoughts, wishing I could simply turn them off and be normal like everyone else. I feel tears swell up in my eyes but immediately shut down any possible emotion as I know they will escalate into something I don’t need right now. The song begins to crescendo and I know it’s about to end, my leg begins to pump with anxiety faster and the song ends and switches into MEGATRON by Nicki Minaj and I let out a loud comical giggle followed by “the Universe has to be fucking with me” in a sarcastic tone and read the time: 10:56 AM. I want to cry and leave the parking lot. Just drive for hours until I run out of gas. Maybe then I won’t be so incredibly anxious that I can’t muster the fucking courage to do any old regular fucking interview. “GOD I CAN’T STAND MYSELF,” I yell inside my head. Again, I close my eyes just to breathe. In and out. In and out. My brain swiftly catches the image of a shitty burger and even worse fries before going back to the idea of me dropping dead on the floor of a Starbucks.
10:57 AM
I turn the car off, halting the air conditioning and any sound coming out of the infotainment system. Such a strange word: Infotainme—Ben, stop fucking stalling. I get out of the car almost stumbling. I look up at the muted brick and chipping white paint of the stripmall with a sense of destined calamity, ready for whatever the fuck is about to happen in this interview. I close the door, put on my mask, wipe the sweat from my forehead, and compulsively check myself out in the reflection of my car, adjusting my shirt to make myself look less big. I walk into the store with the large white and green Starbucks logo on it. I wave to the manager and smile: “Hello!” I say, telling myself it was far too enthusiastic. He waves back and tells me to sit down somewhere offering me a free drink. I decline. My stomach still churns and I can’t shake the feeling that I might just drop dead. He sits down with a colored and customized name tag: Landon, it reads. I tell myself to pretend to be someone else, someone with a bubbly personality, someone who can hold this conversation with ease, someone who isn’t thinking about their dead body colliding with the cold, green tile inside this Starbucks. The interview begins.
Cover Photo by pxhere. Edited by Madison Case.
