Uncertainty
I am someone with high anxiety. It was never a true issue for most of my life. Highschool was sometimes rough but never more than most peoples experiences. In fact, many saw me as a relatively calm person, able to act in times were others were stressed and nervous. It wasn't until college that whatever veneer I had fell away. Like many college freshman, stress ate at me. Some of it self caused. Relationships that never worked out, homework that never got finished, it all cracked. I injured myself some times in sophomore year and for the next 3 years I had a knee injury that never fully healed. One summer, I recognized that self harming thoughts were coming on a little too strong and far too often. I got medicine and have been it on it ever since.
From then on, knowing what I wanted from the world was a little easier. I graduated, started a job that I knew wasn't going to be for me, and found a new one where I gained success and recognition. I started school up again and gained my masters. It has felt like steady progress.
Only recently has that certainty of life been tested more. Most recently in my job and my living. After a couple of years with the same project, the same work again and again, I often recognized how unhappy and stressed I was. Though I probably never said as much, I didn't sleep well, didn't always eat well. I would be irritable, not welcoming to questions. Frustrated at how stale it all became. I was falling apart a bit. Working the weekends at times to make up for work I was too burnt out to do during the week days. I no longer felt that my job was fun. I didn't love it anymore. I tolerated it, because there were the good moments.
Three weeks ago, a job offer at another company came my way. At first, I didn't take it. I felt that I wanted the stability more than anything else, I still saw some purpose in what I was doing, and it helped I liked who I was doing it with. But I felt uncertainty, I felt that I was out of place. That my decision to stay was not correct, for myself and for my future. I felt like I was choosing to remain, not to grow, but to see my work completed. It seemed to not feel right. I let the other company know that I was still interested, they offered to raise the offer to what my company had giving me in a promotion and I accepted.
At the exact same time, I began looking for a house with my partner. Something I should have realized at the start was too much to do at the same time I was considering a job change. I didn't listen to myself though, I was preoccupied with seeing the smile on my partners face when we would look for places to live. We put in an offer, got approved, arrived all the way to the house inspection. But I got cold feet. I backed away. I didn't want to change this part of my life just yet.
Here I am now at the end of that, writing this to collect my thoughts. Tomorrow I have to put in my two weeks, and on to start the next role.
Uncertainty is traumatic. It makes me feel that I am not good enough, that I should be ashamed of the decisions that I make. It makes me filled with the possibility of regret, filled with the what could have happened. The "what ifs" are constantly playing in my head. It makes me feel sick.
I don't know if there is anyway around it in the end. Being an anxious person gives me these traits. Maybe the only comfort I can gain is that there is a "Tyranny of Certainty". To not question, to be totally certain, ignorant of ones own faults, blind to other courses of action, is a curse on its own.