How Anxiety Ruined my UtopYA Experience

When I was fifteen I auditioned for my first show at my local community theatre company, the building I would go on to spend years of my life, the place that became more like home to me than any other place. I auditioned, and I made callbacks.

Callbacks was where I blew it. I was so excited. I was so excited, I introduced myself to everyone. I wanted everyone’s name. I found out years later, when sewing elephant trunks to bicycle helmets, that Jimmy didn’t cast me in that show because I was too talkative. He laughed and said I still talk way too much for my own good. And he was right.

I was friends with everyone. You walked through those theatre doors and I was on you like mayonnaise – I didn’t come off either. I loved everyone, and everyone was my friend.

I left that theatre 4 years later, happy about life. And then I had my first child.

And I was expected to stay home and raise my daughter. I went back to work when I thought I may explode, and everyone thought very little of me. So I stayed home, alone, raised my daughter, alone. I started a blog in the attempts to not feel so alone and was looked down on by the people around me because I was trying to ‘show them up’. So I stopped that and went back to feeling alone. I went back to work, had a miscarriage and left – to be alone.

I was finally able to get pregnant again and the cycle repeated itself – the post pardem depression I was unaware I had got worse and worse…

My friends walked away from me because I was depressed and needy… and I became more alone.

I made do – I felt myself getting better – talking to people, and then I published this book and everything changed.

I ran off to UtopYA – determined to meet people, make connections and not feel so alone in my writing cave.

I expected to be that same 15 year old girl, bubbly, friend to everyone. But when I walked into that room I realized how far away that girl now was.

I was terrified of people. I was terrified of following them around, terrified of talking to people, paranoid about what they were saying about me. I put my guard up and in the end ruined my entire UtopYA experience.

I was called the stick in the mud, the car buddy, the fly on the wall, sour, crabby, and unprofessional for acting the way I did in front of fans.

And inside I was screaming. I was holding back tears in the car, when I sat alone at the panels, when I wandered alone. I doubted myself when I was trying so hard to make small talk.

Things that now come so easy for me online, that once were normal – are now impossible.

Amy Evans, at the very end, told me I was quiet – and I wanted to laugh about the irony. Instead I stuttered out how loud everything was upstairs.

And I think that describes it perfectly. My head is loud, the stories are beautiful and people love them – but me. I am not so sure about me anymore.

But I am beginning to think Rachel has it right, I should just stay in front of my computer and let the people, the stories, and the beauty out.

Now, I bet you are wondering why I am telling you this. Don’t worry, I am wondering why I am so being so open about this in the first place…

But here is the thing.

I have post pardem depression – I have an anxiety disorder. And try as I can to smile at you, sometimes it doesn’t work. As much as I want to strike up a conversation, I am terrified.

I promise you I am wonderful inside, and when I warm up I am still mayonnaise.

But right now, on the surface, I am dried and ugly looking – not the best place for an author to be.

After UtopYA I whittled down my events to six over the next 13 months. That’s six opportunities for me to hydrate myself again.

I want to know the people around me, the authors, the blogger, the readers. Because as I sit in my office, I realize how lonely the job is, how alone I feel.

And I don’t want that anymore.

Anxiety has ruined me, and I am giving myself one year to fix it.

So even though I may look like a sour b&^& as one girl so eloquently put it – I am still me.