High anxiety

Coping came in three steps. First, the conscious effort of scrutinizing food for possible allergens. Then the tasting, or, if more confident, a small bite. And then an excuse to check my chest for a rash—wipe my nose with my shirt, or go to the bathroom every now and then, just to take a peek.

I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder—over food. My anxiety started with an anaphylactic attack two years ago that traumatized me and still does to this very day. I have made a monster of my meals since then. I coped, in a way, by spending most of those years consoled by a partner who amazed me with his capability to be both endearing and witty. I was his anchor, he was my wings.

It was an anxiety attack over food and love.

To ease my distress, my psychiatrist recommended an anxiolytic/antihistamine. After more than half a year of taking it, I realized that it was serving as nothing more than a placebo.

If there was a routine to control my anxiety, there was also one to maintain a relationship that lasted three wonderful years.

The updates of our whereabouts. The late-night conversations about how our work had been, or how our families were. Then, if it came to it, the preparations for an inevitable fight if the routine got broken.

It was cute at first, but eventually tiring. It came to a point that I actually became anxious of going astray. A routine sets one up to impossible standards, and ultimately, to disappointment.

It all started with a busy day at work. It was a bad time for me to get preoccupied and my partner to be sick. He tried to call at work but I failed to answer, or even to acknowledge how he was feeling because of the demands of the day.

I only realized he had texted hours after the coverage. When I called, he was already in a sour mood, disappointed and hurt. The stress of the day took its toll on me, too, and his demeanor only made me feel cranky. Accusations were made—controlling, selfish, unaffectionate, uncaring—and a cool-off was in order, only to result a week later in a breakup.

He reasoned that I had failed at making him feel my love and affection for him. That he was persistent in taking care of me despite his busy schedule, but I failed to attend to him when it was his turn to be sick. That I got absorbed with my work and was seemingly uninterested in his.

I did not deny any of these. And when I sought to appeal his decision, he said he had to be firm. He wanted, he said, to focus on helping his family and, possibly, to go abroad.

He said his ultimate fear was: What if he had died and I wouldn’t know because I was too busy? I told him that my own fear was him choosing his family over me. I didn’t know I’d be an unwitting casualty of a trait I so admire.

There’s a cliché that if you really love a person, you must let him or her go. And it’s a cliché because it has always made sense. So that’s what I did.

Interestingly, the relationship concluded a few weeks after two of my happiest and saddest memories of it. We are, after all, just memories in the aftermath.

We were in line for a movie festival when a woman nearby claimed that she was selling a house in Pampanga near the location of “Disneyland Philippines” (an Internet hoax, obviously). The sales agent tried to catch up with the group when the line moved on to the cinema. But if she did foresee the construction of “Disneyland Philippines” in Pampanga, she sure didn’t see the wall on which she would hit her head as she was running in the dark like a penguin.

We were in stitches, doubled up in laughter. No, not laughing, but guffawing. I think that was the hardest we had ever laughed. A few weeks later, we would be crying just as hard.

Not a month or so before, we met up only for him to lie on my chest and cry. He expressed his fear of no longer feeling any affectionate words from me, of my breaking up with him. He appealed for more endearments. I assured him, and expressed my need to be understood as well. And I whispered, breathing in his hair and hugging him tightly: Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you.

And I didn’t. But the cracks were there. I was just too busy to take notice.

Moving on has not been easy since then. And my anxiety took on a whole new breadth. I realized that all this time, I wasn’t just anxious about my food. I was also anxious about my work. I was anxious about our relationship. And after the breakup, I was anxious, more than I had ever been, about myself.

It didn’t take long for my routine to shift to focusing on healing. I can’t be another’s if I stop being myself. So I stopped taking the drugs that made me vulnerable—the anxiolytic, and the love of my life. I hit two birds with one stone: my anxiety problem, and the heartbreak. I cried 10 times a day for two weeks to relieve myself of pain—to tire myself out, until I no longer felt the need to keep on hurting.

We only make monsters of our fear when we keep holding on to it.

That three-year relationship—the happiest in my life, so far—was anchored on each being the other’s support system. But it couldn’t go on like that alone. I blamed myself for being a worthless partner, but I realized that we couldn’t always be there to fill each other’s self-deficits. If I had disappointed him, I was hurt at his failure to realize that I had no bad faith. And I shouldn’t blame myself for that.

It wasn’t an easy relationship. I was a realist, he was an idealist. I value my independence, he is dependable to his family. The logic in our relationship was acceptance. We admired each other for who we are. And when that ends, it just stops making sense.

He was the wind to my feet, I was his anchor to the ground. But as every anchor and wind does, it rusted, it waned.

And I now realize that I no longer find the need to be anxious about that.

Macoy Cayabyab, 23, is a news junkie who makes a living writing stories.