In 2014-2015, when my agoraphobia and general anxiety was at an all time high since the damned 2002-2005, I would spend 50 dollars a day on Ubers. 1,5 block from my apartment I’d get my usual panic attack which left me with no other option than to call an Uber with the hope of not being consumed by the moving pavement beneath me. To faint. To vomit. To die.
When people ask me what I spent the money I made from modelling on, I say: Uber.
Another thing I spent an incredibly large sum of money on in the duration of my 31 years has been gum and hand sanitiser. 2014-2015 was no different.
Another branch of my anxiety has always been hypochondria. My biggest fear of all, greater than the fear of death, was the visceral fear of the norovirus, food poisoning or anything else that would cause projectile vomiting. Before I left the house (to get in an Uber), to go to work, the airport dinner or Whole Foods, I’d made sure to armour up on the only two antidotes I knew would calm my anxiety: gum and hand sanitizer. At this point in life, anything would cause a panic attack; a bumpy flight from Miami to New York, the line at Whole Foods, being on set, walking to get my coffee, hearing about a friend of a friend who had the norovirus a month ago or eating fish.
The way anxiety manifests in me is much like the nausea you get after you’ve had a bad piece of fish at The Standard Hotel on Shelter Island (I can confirm). And even when I have found myself projectile vomiting, after said fish, I could not stop stuffing my face with gum while I rubbed my hands with hand sanitiser from Duane Reade over the toilet, in between getting sick.
I’ve always been prone to stomach ache and nausea. The other day I went to the theatre with my boyfriend, my mom and her friend who has known me since I was a child. We discussed my partner’s ADHD, my mom’s potential ADHD and how I only just recently became aware of how exaggerated I experience life. My mom’s friend noted how life seemed to move through me at an incredibly sensitive octave with a certain velocity, even as a child.
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