A Day of Dealing with Photoshop.

Today, I make the claim that photoshop is evil.

I don't think I really have any grounds to make that claim, but I'm going to make it anyway.

I don't have photoshop on my humble PC, which is a big clunker named Kip that used to have a bow in the corner. So when I went into my digital rhetoric class today and my professor said, "All right, let's use photoshop!" I went to the Mac lab across the hall to check one out like most of my classmates that also use PCs. I logged into the shiny and sleek MacBook. I named him Gerald after the dead baby in a book I'm reading for senior seminar. And probably because I named him Gerald, he refused to open photoshop.

My professor had already gone through the basics of our tutorial: open this image that was posted on our class website, drag it over to photoshop, put a frame around the girl's face. (The picture was of a girl and as the class went on, she began to freak me out. A lot.)

Photoshop was still opening. For the past five minutes, while my classmates had been trying to open the image of this interesting looking girl on their own photoshops, I had a pinwheel of death just spinning, spinning spinning and I was plucking up the courage to raise my hand to ask for a new computer.

This guy. This guy right here.

Raising my hand and asking for a new computer had implications. On the one hand, I couldn't sit here all fifty minutes with the pinwheel spinning. However, raising my hand would mean everyone would look at me. What if my professor said no? (Of course she wouldn't, but what if?) What if she said yes like a normal human being? Then I would have to get up in front of the whole class, walk in front of the room, leave the room, grab a new computer, walk back, and be behind.

I raised my hand. Asked. Got a new computer. Felt the judgement. Turned bright red. Focused hard on logging into the new MacBook that I didn't name Gerald. Tried to remember where to find photoshop. Found it. Couldn't find the image on our class website. Started to panic.

For most people, having a small panic like this isn't a big deal. You can poke your neighbour and say, "Hey, can you help me find this image?" And they'd kindly lean over and help you.

My kind of GAD panic went something like this.

My face got really hot. My hands and my feet started to tingle and eventually my feet went numb. My chest started to feel like it was caving in on itself and I thought about how all of my ribs would snap. Breathing became difficult. It became very hard to focus on my computer screen. My legs started to shake and it shook the table that I was at. And the what ifs started to circulate through my head, going farther and farther away from the actual topic at hand, devolving into a spiral of panicked thoughts that made absolutely no sense to anyone, least of all me. My entire face started twitching as I fought off tears that were welling up behind my eyes and making my cheekbones feel thin and fragile.

I could not do this in class.

My friend Lisa was sitting next to me. She helped me open up the image and put it into photoshop. I calmed down a little bit and tried to focus on what my professor wanted me to do. But now I was already in panic mode, and once I'm in panic mode, it's very hard for me to get out of it. The main problem that I have is that I know that something has already gone wrong, and therefore I understand that everything else I do from now on can go wrong and that I'll be the cause of it.

When my professor asked us to push a button that said background, I was already so invested in panic mode that I couldn't find it. Lisa, not so patiently this time (but it wasn't her fault) showed me where it was and it was in a very obvious spot.

This did not make my anxiety better. I focused on the fact that I didn't feel like crying anymore and that I had some feeling in my feet and that my ribs hadn't snapped.

The next part of the photoshop process went smoothly. I made a circle around the image of the girl's face and I played around with it. Lisa made her look like the statue of liberty. I turned her in to a pale gothic redhead with green eyeliner and piercing red lipstick. My anxiety was abating. It was going to be okay, I was going to get the hang of this.

Then we moved onto the next portion and everything went wrong again.

My professor was prowling the classroom, making sure we were doing okay. I was more concentrated on hiding all of my panic symptoms (I was starting to breathe shallowly and some tears were escaping) than on getting my photoshop to do what it needed to do.

I was hoping that I looked like this.

Having the time of my life using photoshop!!!!!

And I was hoping that I did not look like this.

This is how I felt. With numb feet. And sweat. And breaking ribs.

I don't know if my professor saw through it and deconstructed the notion that I'm very good at hiding my anxiety in social situations or if she just saw the my photoshop wasn't working properly. She knelt next to me and slowly started to click on things, making sure that I could see what she was doing. While she slowly went through to figure out what was wrong, I took deep, calming breaths, tried to suck my tears back into my tear ducts, thought long and hard about getting feeling back into my feet and hands, and reminded myself that my ribs were not going to snap in half. Eventually my professor and I came to one simple conclusion: I was using the wrong version of photoshop.

There were five minutes left in class. I opened the new version of photoshop while she went back to the front of the classroom and wrapped up the tutorial. I was feeling a bit better; this wasn't my fault, this wasn't my fault, this wasn't my fault, none of this was my fault, no one had noticed that I had panicked, no one had noticed, it wasn't a full panic attack, everything was going to be fine.

Then the new photoshop didn't open. There was some sort of error.

It didn't matter because class was over, but I wanted it to open to prove that I could do something right, that maybe photoshop didn't hate me like I irrationally thought it did. I kept thinking about the picture of the girl that we were altering and how her eyes kept looking at me, how she had a little smirk on her face like she could see all of the panic that was coursing through each of my limbs and all of my organs, that she knew exactly what I was thinking, and I was on the verge of tears again.

I found myself alone in the classroom with my professor. I hitched up a smile and wished her a belated birthday. We joked for a few minutes and I returned both computers that I borrowed. Then I ran to the library to my study desk and I cried for a good ten minutes.

What's come out of today, all of the panic in the middle of class, is not just that I failed at hiding it (which is something I'm normally very good at) but the fact that when I get to England to become a blogger, I'll have to use photoshop. It reminded me of the time I first set up a blogspot account like this one and nothing went correctly and how I shut out the rest of the world, thinking that I could never do this. How can I be a blogger if I can't use the web application for it?

How can I do what I want to do if I don't know how and I can't get the help that I need?

We have another tutorial on Monday. I'm going to spend all weekend trying not to dread it. Every time I dread it, I'm going to smile and I'm going to tell myself that it is a learning experience and that if I cry in class, that's fine. To hell with everyone there.

To cry is to turn ourselves inside out, and this is a noble pursuit. 

Beckett vs. the Dragon

When you have anxiety, it's always good to have a few things on your side.

1. A really great friend who understands when you're really anxious over nothing and who doesn't judge you for being afraid of everything, including them.
2. A nice, warm bed that also doesn't judge. (This is good for crying in.)
3. Something furry to cuddle with.

I have numbers one and two covered. I have a wonderful friend named Adam who has really long hair and when I get anxious, he lets me braid it while I talk about all of my anxieties. I also have a nice, warm, and nonjudgemental bed that's very nice to snuggle in when I'm afraid to leave my room.

I'm lacking number three because I'm allergic to fur. But I knew that I wanted to get a pet. I definitely wanted to get a pet.

As a Resident Assistant at my small school, I have to abide by all the rules and regulations of my college, which means that I couldn't get a snake, I couldn't get a tarantula (which actually made me very sad) and I was done having fish because my last two fish had died and they broke my heart. I've wanted a tortoise for quite some time, but I'm waiting to get one until I've actually inched my way over to England and I have an established lifestyle of (hopefully) blogging professionally.

So, today, my friend Barbara and I embarked on a journey to get a bearded dragon.

This is quite the majestic specimen.

The entire twenty minute drive to the pet store, I was anxious. What if they didn't have the type that I wanted? What if it was too expensive? What if it didn't like me? What would my parents say? What if we got in a car crash before we got there? What if the car crash killed us? If it didn't kill us, what if we were severely injured? How would my parents handle that?

Thank you, GAD, for making my life fun.

When we get to the pet store, I avoided all of the store employees and made a beeline straight for the reptiles. I found a tortoise and I cooed at him for a while, but Barbara was the voice of reason and made me look at the bearded dragons. They were in a cute little tank with a nice little log and there were six of them, all lazing around on top of one another.

As soon as I put my hands on my knees in an awkward sorority squat and looked at them, the biggest one perked up, scuttled across the five of his brethren, scrambled down the log, put both of his front feet up on the glass, and stared intently at me.

It was love.

I hovered anxiously with Barbara in front of their tank for a long time. I'd say it was a good twenty minutes. We broke away to look at the fish to avoid a store employee. Eventually Barbara laid her hand on my arm and said, "Do you want me to get a store employee?" 

Like she did when I tore my meniscus last March, Barbara did all the talking and employee handling while I wrung my hands, thinking about every scenario in which the employee was judging me. What did he think about my English Honourary letters that I was wearing? Did he think I was incompetent because I couldn't talk to him? 

Barbara did so much of the employee talking that he looked genuinely surprised when she said, "No, Beckett's the one getting the bearded dragon," when he tried to hand her a form to sign. 

I was even more anxious as we looked at starter kits with lamps and substrates. I tried to remember that I had planned for this, that I had taken out a chunk of my paycheck for this, that I had done my research, that all of this was premeditated. But my brain was not cooperating at all.

After I got out of the store where there were people that I swear were watching me check out with beady eyes, I felt more relaxed. I only thought about my van crashing and killing us and my new lizard ten times on the twenty minute drive back, and that felt like a small victory. 

Barbara helped me set up my new pet's tank because I was really too anxious to function. My room was messy from a night of emotions after watching Skyfall, the latest James Bond installment, and I felt that I was welcoming my lizard into a bad environment. I felt that my room needed to be spotlessly clean for when he moved in so that he knew that he was wanted and loved and that his owner wasn't a terrible slob that left her bra on the floor every night. 

When his tank was set up and we got him all situated and happy underneath his basking light, I felt a little less anxious for probably thirty seconds. And thirty seconds was all it lasted because I realised that I needed to name him.

Barbara had left to go home with someone for the rest of the weekend and I was alone in my messy room, texting Adam desperately, wondering what on earth I was supposed to name him. This felt like the biggest decision on the entire planet, bigger than the idea of actually going out and getting a bearded dragon in the first place, because they live for ten years.

Whatever I named my lizard, he was going to be stuck with it for ten years.

My thought process went something like this: literary characters, they live forever! But what about a superhero name from all those superhero movies that you like? What about another movie name? You're planning on naming your tortoise after a Hobbit character, do something like that. What if it's actually a girl? You won't be able to tell until three years from now. YOU CAN'T TELL UNTIL THREE YEARS FROM NOW, BUT HE CAN'T BE NAMELESS FOR THREE YEARS. Why are you assuming it's a he? Isn't that very patriarchal and aren't you an intense feminist and now everything you've worked toward will be broken down? Look up names online. If you can't find any, you can always call someone. No, you can't call someone, scratch that. Why isn't Adam helping you pick out a name? Why did Adam go home this weekend? This name is a ten year commitment. What is going to happen when you have to name your own children?

And so it went on for a good solid two hours until I named him Hamlet. (If you didn't read that entire paragraph, I'm not judging you.)

Meet Hamlet.

Now I have a bearded dragon named Hamlet living in my room. I went through a lot of anxiety to get him. Talking to employees, worrying about crashing my car and dying, coming up with a ten year majestic name for a majestic lizard, the works.

But now that I have him and he's been sitting on his log like Simba on Pride Rock, I'm feeling a lot less anxious.

Welcome to my anxious life, Hamlet. I hope your brain isn't as scary as mine is. 

Anxiety With a Capital A.

I feel like generally, with any blog, you're supposed to have some sort of about me. For reader engagement and why you have a blog in the first place.

My name is Beckett, I'm twenty-two. I go to a small school in the middle of Michigan. I major in English, minor in creative writing, I like to write poetry and novels and blogs, my parents are scientists, I love to travel. I want to move to England. I wish I had long curly hair and I buried a really big piece of my heart in York Minster Cathedral. I'm the type of girl who would put that in an about me, that I buried my heart in a cathedral.

But what a lovely cathedral it is.

What I don't say when people want an introduction to the ambitious Beckett Marsak is this.

"Hi, I'm Beckett, and I suffer from Generalised Anxiety Disorder."

But I want to say it, I want to scream it, so that people actually understand how my life works.

When I try to describe GAD, I always find myself rather speechless, so I'll let my blogging idol, Jenny Lawson, describe it for me.

"It's become my experience that people always assume that generalized anxiety disorder is preferable to social anxiety disorder, because it sounds more vague and unthreatening, but those people are totally wrong. For me, having generalized anxiety disorder is basically like having all of the other anxiety disorders smooshed into one. Even the ones that aren't recognized by modern science. Things like birds-will-probably-smother-me-in-my-sleep anxiety disorder and I-keep-extra-crackers-in-my-pockets-in-case-I-get-trapped-in-an-elevator anxiety disorder. Basically I'm just generally anxious about fucking everything."

People have a tendency to think that anxiety isn't a real thing, that it's just needless worrying. That, to me, is a very dangerous mentality, because there is nothing more real to me than when I am afraid to leave my apartment for no apparent reason, but the idea is so terrifying that I sit in my room and cry. 

The other week a really cool band came to perform at my college. A half hour before the performance, I was hit with an anxiety attack so severe that I threw up and was afraid to leave my bedroom. By some miracle of god, I managed to leave my apartment and I ventured to the venue to hear the band perform. While I was there with my friends and co-workers, I was laughing and joking and talking spiritedly about what kind of merch the band would have.

Inside, I thought I was going to physically drown. Every single thing outside of my bedroom was terrifying. 

this may or may not be me.

When you have GAD, a lot of things start to look like mountains. Leaving your apartment. Going to the cafeteria. Calling a business. Talking to a store employee.

Most people see these things as little things. Like Legos. Legos are little and can be stepped over.

People like me see these things as mountains. As my therapist calls them, "Big, terrible mountains."

Yep, that's Mt. Everest to prove my point.

At my last appointment with my therapist, we discussed the steps I'm taking to get better, which currently involve "seeing big, terrible mountains as victories." I called a business yesterday, victory! I went to the cafeteria alone, victory! I left my apartment when I was afraid to, victory! Not a terrible mountain, a victorious growing experience!

I told her that was all well and good, but my biggest and growing concern was that my anxiety was going to keep me from getting everything that I wanted out of life. This has been a growing anxiety that I've had for a good two years and it makes me physically ill at least once a week. 

I am terrified that I will be too afraid to ask for the help that I need. I am scared that I will simply sit back and let all of these opportunities slip away from me because I am too scared to pursue them. 

That's why I have this blog, to be perfectly honest. So I can write about all of my struggles, all of the Mt. Everests that I'm too scared to climb, but I'll climb them anyway because I have to write about them. I can sit down next week and write, "Well today I went to the career planning office and I learned about this particular grad school, and I was so anxious that I threw up all over my new dress and I didn't leave my apartment for ten hours afterwards, but I did it, and it's a good grad school."

I am not the only person that feels like this. Sometimes it feels like no one else is afraid of everything, is terrified of the small things, no one else can't comprehend what life would be like if I didn't worry about every single thing on the planet, but I'm not the only person. And I want to write about it so other people understand and so other people can relate.

Yesterday I made an important phone call and I saw it as a victory and not as a big, terrible mountain, and I think that's progress.

So I'm still inching to England, and anxiety with a capital A is coming with me. But hopefully by the time I get there, that anxiety will just be something that I can deal with, not something that governs my entire existence.

For Now, We Inch.

When you're twenty-two and you're a senior in college, there are a series of questions that middle-aged people tend to ask you without any hesitancy.

Do you have a boyfriend? (That one gets me every time.)
What's your major? (Obviously political science so I can be the first female president. I mean, I'm an English Major.)
What are you going to do with that English Major? (I always want to laugh loudly at them and then flounce away into the sunset when people ask me this question.)

Middle-aged people, and even people that aren't middle-aged, even old people like my grandparents tend to ask these questions without the thought that maybe they make the average twenty-two year old person highly uncomfortable. Because, you know, you're supposed to have all this stuff figured out. You're supposed to know exactly what you want to do with your major, and you're supposed to have this great concept map taped to your wall with this great plan with arrows that points right to a big square that says DREAM JOB! with about eighty-three exclamation points around it.

I always envision this concept map to look like Westeros from Game of Thrones and I'm on the King's Road, trying to get to King's Landing on a month-long journey. The only problem with this metaphor is that my journey to my dream job is a lot longer than the trip from Winterfell to King's Landing, and I feel like if I ever get to King's Landing, I'd get beheaded, and that's kind of a downer.

Sometimes I think it might be easier to be beheaded than to pursue my dreams, though.

This is a good headline: "Beheaded College Student's Last Words Are: 'At Least This is Easier Than my Real Dreams'". (I probably shouldn't go into journalism.)

Whenever an adult makes me uncomfortable by asking me what on earth I want to do with my life, I always have my answer prepared, and that answer is simple.

I WANT TO MOVE TO ENGLAND! (Sorry I only used one exclamation point, eighty-three seemed really obsessive.)

People tend to have two reactions to my statement. The first is the over-the-top oh-wow-that's-so-cool-and-progressive-that-you're-moving-abroad-wow-you-have-such-guts-and-I'm-sure-it'll-be-magnificient.

Then there's the good old "but why would you want to leave America?"

When I explained this to my grandfather, he shook his head and called me a coward that's far too cowardly to fix the American government, and you know what, he's absolutely right, because my life is governed by something called Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and I suppose that's why I even have this in the first place, this blog about how I'm going to hop across the pond and start my fabulous life in London or York or somewhere with my English Degree and make a name for myself.

Like I said, it might be easier if I get beheaded.

When real adults ask me what I want to do with my life and I tell them truthfully that I want to blog professionally over in England, a lot of them are very excited and then very skeptical, mostly because most of them don't believe that blogging is a real profession. They're all very keen on asking me exactly how I'm going to achieve this DREAM JOB!!!!!!! of mine and if my mother will miss me.

Yes, my mother will miss me, but we're planning a time where she and my dad visit me for an entire month, I get them London subway passes, and we take a train to France.

The other side of that question has yet to be answered, and normally I just shrug my abnormally broad shoulders and if I had the long, curly hair that I've wanted all of my life, I could twist it shyly and look cute while doing it, pretending to pursue my dream.

I'll fly across the pond! Get a cheap flat! Meet a nice British man with a steady job who is okay with never having a dog and wears sweater vests! We'll grocery shop together and he'll kiss me every time I get a rejection letter! Eventually I'll burst into the British workforce and we'll get married in a big cathedral and have adorable British children and my mother will still miss me!

Right now I'm inching. I'm working through this terrible thing called Anxiety with a capital A, and some days it's going to prevent me from going to the career planning office and sitting down with someone and professing my dream of doing this great thing, this great thing that I'm afraid of.

For now, we inch.