If I close my eyes, I can still see my young, sophomore self. Frazzled, she stands in front of the mirror in the boathouse locker room. I had raced my first real regatta the weekend before, I was getting the hang of in-person school, and new, meaningful friendships were beginning to blossom. I was miserable. Homecoming was in a week, we had another race the next day, my mom said I needed to clean my room, my fear of failing an upcoming precalculus test was growing, there was a Collegio essay coming up, and I wasn’t sure if I was losing my best friend in the mists of all my anxiety.
Anxiety: the overwhelming feeling of inability to tackle each issue as it comes. That is how I define it and how it defined me for the first half of my high school years. That day in the locker room, a very wise senior told me, “Claire, there will always be something. There will never be a weekend with nothing”. At the time, this both angered and terrified me. This amazing athlete who I looked up to added thunder to the anxious rain cloud over my head. But as a senior now myself, I know exactly what she meant and I have no words to describe just how right she was.
I now thank God that there will never be a weekend where there isn’t something to deal with. A test to study for, a regatta to attend, layout page to complete, rooms to clean, and on and on. This also means there will never be a weekend without anxiety, but pressure makes diamonds and those diamonds can be beautiful if you take life once piece of coal at a time. In my second half of high school, I have learned, and am still learning, to be present in each thing that scares me.
Just because I have a Physics test on Monday doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy a Saturday night with my closest friends. Even though there’s an erg test waiting for me next week, I can still be in the moment rowing and laughing with my teammates right now. My anxiety for my future doesn’t have to stop me from telling my parents about my day at the dinner table. I can make room in my homework time each evening for facetiming my favorite people.
As a senior now, I see exactly where I was going wrong in the locker room those two and a half years ago. Looking back, I don’t wish I spent more time doing any one thing in high school. Instead, I only regret not doing the things I did more presently. When you make your diamonds one at a time, you free up time for so much more good or even simply more time to work through the mountains of one’s mind. Anxiety will always be there, I think it controls all of us in one way or another, but it doesn’t have to cost any of us opportunities to love and to learn.
