Chronic anxiety is so weird cause I can look and act really calm on the outside, even while feeling like something is vaguely wrong about everything and nothing. I’m pretty sure there was a time when I just thought I was calm because that’s what other people said about me and it seemed plausible enough. But looking back, I was distinctly anxious about various things even at a young age. I just didn’t have the kind of relationship / family dynamic where it felt like something I could bring up, or maybe even had the words for. Signs of it were instead categorized as “shy” or “introverted”. Other siblings of mine were the “sensitive ones” and I didn’t want to be one of the “sensitive ones”, so I learned to repress my emotions instead I guess. Which was pretty easy to do since I could learn it by mimicking a parent who did the same kind of thing.

Also I’ve heard that prolonged stress can be damaging to memory, among other things. Or maybe it was specifically about depression and such, I don’t know. Can’t remember off the top of my head (tempted to say “no joke intended” to be a smartass about the other recent comment in here). But anyway, I think I’ve been hit by that kind of thing a lot. I can remember enough to function, but in terms of like childhood memories or even things I did a few years ago, there just isn’t that much that I remember. I think a lot of my memory gets funneled toward looking for threats (cause anxiety) and little toward reminiscing and tradition. Which makes it harder to build and maintain relationships.

If I’d grown up in an AES state, I might have made a good detective. But then again, if I’d grown up in a place like that, maybe I would have been genuinely more chill too. Mentally, in my liberal days, I briefly flirted with the idea of looking into that kind of thing, but I’m glad I didn’t cause it would suck to learn that and end up working for imperialists.