I’m Not Type A, I Just Have Anxiety

Those who have read my blog for a while are familiar with the fact that I’m an overachiever. I am a classic workaholic. Every personality test I’ve ever taken has told me I have a “Type A” personality.

I excelled at school. I’ve exceeded expectations in all of my jobs. I have a reputation of being highly efficient, learning fast, sacrificing whatever is necessary, going the extra distance, and raising the curve for my peers.

Being a teacher came naturally to me because I can multitask like crazy. Someone on twitter once said that teachers make 1,500 decisions per day. I have no idea if that number is true or not, but it feels like it is. I am definitely competitive, a perfectionist, critical of myself, impatient, energetic, and aggressive when it comes to getting the job done. All of these qualities are necessary when you are trying to appear “highly effective” on paper for your district and the state, make sure all students actually have an equitable chance to learn, and mentor each individual student through the hardest three years of their life.

I took pride in my Type A personality. It made me excellent. I got honors. I won awards. I gave speeches.

I almost killed myself last October.

Honestly, our society values Type A personalities. They make someone highly efficient and productive; two things that fuel capitalism. What I’ve recently learned, though, is my Type A personality was made possible by unbridled anxiety.

I was a professional multitasker because I was obsessed with others’ approval. I literally felt like the approval of others was the only thing that gave me worth. I felt like once I had that approval, I had to continually prove I deserved it by earning it over and over again.

I lived on a hamster wheel, in constant fear that I would lose everything I had earned if I dared to stop and take a break. I told myself that every mistake was a failure, and that failure could kill me. I embodied the Talladega Nights “If you’re not first, you’re last” mentality.

Basically, I allowed my extreme anxiety free reign to run my life. I caught myself in the trap of constantly feeling worthless, not good enough. I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders when no one asked me to in the first place. I was miserable.

And, at the same time, why would anyone assume anything was wrong when I was doing so well? On the outside I was perfect. I was doing “it.” I was achieving my goals, supporting my family, and gaining approval from the people who “mattered.”

Isn’t that what success looks like?

Unfortunately, yes. This is what success in our society looks like. The narrative of the Type A personality is a convenient way to encourage at-all-costs productivity. As long as someone is productive, they are successful.

By explaining my extreme behavior away with my Type A personality, I was able to hide my mental illnesses. I could avoid dealing with any of my problems and my trauma by adding more work onto my plate and being rewarded for it by my superiors. If I just kept going, and never stopped, I would never have to face my anxiety for real.

I was winning awards based on my performance. My performance was fueled by my ability to pretend I wasn’t constantly on the edge of cracking, while I took on more and more work.

And then I finally cracked.

And I’ve finally realized my Type A personality was really anxiety. And my need for the approval of others was trapping me in toxic cycles of thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. So I’m officially letting my Type A self go.

Type A Renea is gone. I put her to rest in the name of mindfulness, happiness, self love, and stability.

I am already grieving her absence. It’s hard to let go of excellence. It’s hard to accept that living a healthier life means giving up what once made me great.

I am definitely going through a major transition right now. Living a mental health-focused life forced me to make a lot of changes. Living mindfully and focusing one day at a time isn’t conducive to success in a capitalist sense, but god damn am I much happier as a Type B.

The Process of Processing

So I spoke my truth. The world knows about my assault and how it’s impacted me since.

So, now what? What do you do when you finally rip open your widest wound and wear it as a badge of honor on your sleeve?

Look everyone! Here it is! All my ugly dirty parts that I’ve been keeping hidden!

Here is what has defined so much of who I’ve been over the last decade! Here’s what I worked so desperately to keep the world from knowing about me!

I put so much thought, so much emotion, and so much preparation into the moment I would finally come out of hiding and speak my truth (about both my sexuality and my assault). And I did it. I finally did it. My story is on the internet and that means anyone who cares enough to find out can know these details about me.

I finally jumped that hurdle.

So, now what?

What do I do now?

Seriously, I’m asking for suggestions.

(Below, find a poem I wrote to express how this all feels right now)

There are certain memories

that fill my guts with wet cement

They weigh me down,

and leave me

to get stale on the shelf

And I feel that

I feel stale

Soggy

Like someone’s dirty bandage

that fell off

and ended up

in the filter of a public pool

These memories

they stall me

I could be on fire

flying high

taking on the world

And, like ingrown hair, one of these memories will start to fester.

Until it’s all I can think about

And all I can see is beige

And my mouth fills with sand

And my will deflates

And my soul becomes hollow

And my guts fill with wet cement

And I’m left

on the shelf

to get stale

The Soundtrack of my Trauma

TRIGGER WARNING: The following contains a description of a sexual assault. As much as I try to avoid peddling in trauma, sharing my story is something I’ve realized recently that I need to do. The following traumatic experience was the most formative experience of my young adult life. It has held me stuck, stripped me of my power, kept me from my life, and potentially ended my career.

Well, that chapter officially needs to be over. And my therapist says one way to process through trauma is exposure to it. In other words, sharing my story. Hearing it. Reading it. Discussing it. So my brain can file this information away differently and my body doesn’t have to perpetually live in fight or flight mode. Selective mutism has kept me from speaking these words out loud, even to my therapist. That hasn’t changed. I still can’t speak about these things out loud (like, literally, physically can’t). Which means I’m not going to be able to answer questions associated with this post quite yet either.

So, as usual, I’m using this online space as an experiment in being open and vulnerable, and hopefully therefore, a bridge to healing. My tarot reading this morning gave me the confidence to feel like today is the day for step 1… so here we go…

If you feel like you can’t handle reading the specifics, I see you and I respect you, thanks for stopping by.

I was in college. It was Halloween. I was dressed like a bird. Earlier that week a boy had stopped by my apartment looking for his mail as he had been the previous tenant. I thought he was cute and we flirted a little bit before he took his mail and left. Imagine my sense of it’s-a-small-world surprise when he walked into the Halloween party I was at a few days later. He immediately struck up a conversation with me. He told me I had pretty eyes and fed me a fifth of Bacardi Razz. I, on my college budget and underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, had only eaten white rice that day. The alcohol quickly took control as it traveled through my empty stomach into my bloodstream. I remember talking to him. I remember kissing him. I remember following him upstairs. Then we were in the bathroom and I was sitting on the sink and he slid his hand up my skirt and took off my panties. At that point I had a breathtaking moment of lucidity where my brain cut through the alcohol fog and I realized what was about to happen. And I didn’t want it to happen. I did not want to have sex with this stranger.

I slid off the counter.

I gently pushed him away from me.

I said I needed to find my friends.

I said I was sorry

I said I had to go

I said please stop

I said I was sorry

I pushed him away a little harder

I reached around him for the doorknob he grabbed my wrist he turned me around he pinned me against the counter he pushed up my skirt.

From the moment of penetration on I don’t remember feeling him inside me. I remember numbness. I remember hearing his breathing in my left ear. I remember staring into my own eyes in the mirror over the dirty sink.

The next thing I remember I was waking up on the couch in my friends’ dark apartment and my friend-with-benefits-hook-up-buddy-who-really-wanted-to-be-my-boyfriend came to get me. As I descended the exterior stairs down from the third floor apartment – riding fireman style on my fwb’s shoulder – I vomited white rice everywhere. I remember looking at it and thinking “no one will even know this is vomit, it just looks like someone spilled some rice.” I laughed about it to myself.

The next morning I remembered nothing. My brain had initially blacked out everything that had taken place once the fifth of Bacardi was empty. It wasn’t until a days-later conversation with a friend who was at the party that it all came rushing back to me. You see, she revealed my rapist had come down from the bathroom that night, and told everyone in attendance we had had sex.

I went to Planned Parenthood. When they asked if there had been a recent occurrence that made me want to get tested for all STDs including HIV I told them “no.” I stopped going out with my friends and practically moved in with my fwb who was rapidly becoming my partner. I stopped eating. I cried every night. I convinced everyone it was because I missed high-school-boyfriend with whom I had broken up a couple months before. People thought I was just conflicted over my feelings for new boy. People had no idea I was falling apart. People had no idea I was going back to Planned Parenthood every 3 months to get tested for HIV. People had no idea because I never told them. I never told anyone until 2 years later after then-friend-with-benefits had turned into boyfriend and I realized that I loved him and that I was safe with him. I felt guilty keeping this secret from him, like I was damaged goods and he didn’t even know. Like keeping it from him was duping him into falling in love with someone who wasn’t worth any more than what he could get from her body.