Every year, I write myself an essay of gratitude on Thanksgiving. Normally, I distill feelings from the previous months and put challenges into perspective or consider the need for thankfulness as an everyday practice.

This year, I think I am too nerve wracked by anxiety to string anything philosophical together.

I’m about to kick off Round 4 of a major project for a client of a client. It has to do with healthcare technology and marketing, two areas which I’m really not familiar with. I took the task on not for money, but for the challenge and for the opportunity to prove that my capabilities are valuable enough to potentially warrant a UK visa. The project was quite out of my area of expertise and comfort zone, yet I’ve relished the challenge of learning as I’ve gone along.

The first three rounds took it out of me. There were long days of writing, 3 am wake-up calls, moments of panic, a terrorizing feeling of “holy shit, I can’t do this.” The final day of Phase 1 was 15 hours of research and writing, which left my mind feeling like it was moving in molasses as I stared at the Deliveroo app for 30 minutes, unable to piece together a single dinner order.

I shut out the world to get these projects done. I didn’t even realize I was in Seville until about Day 4, when the sunshine burning my brows and sweat collecting in my jeans told me that I’d been magically teleported to t-shirt weather.

To be honest, these projects left me feeling burned out. I think I’ve managed to open the door on that UK visa (hoorah!!!!), but I don’t know if I feel it in my heart anymore. I’m tired, I’ve been depressed about two or three evenings a week, prompting me to change my routine during the dusk hours where emotional darkness also sets in and I kind of just want to go home.

I hate anxiety. Maybe this is a little bit of petulance pouring through, but I really dislike the way this feeling takes my brain captive and numbs my heart at times. I know intellectually I am more than capable of taking care of this project and my life and my aspirations, but it’s like anxiety creates amnesia. Actually, anxiety feels like a giant squid, wrapping its tentacles around my body, squeezing out all sense of light, truth and rationality and leaving me gasping for air. When taken hold by anxiety, life feels one-dimensional. There is no room for wonder or curiosity when I’m trying to run from this all-encompassing fog or curling up and trying to make it pass.

Being thankful for my anxiety on Thanksgiving feels like an outlandish cliché, one of those faux moments of coerced emotiveness that tend to feature a curated background, pre-meditated pose and a #blessed.

But you know what? Fuck it. I am thankful.

Why? Because if I’m not thankful for anxiety, then what am I? Frozen in trepidation because of it? Running towards any escape from it?

As much as it may pain me to say it, my anxiety has forced me to become a better man. Years of running towards pleasure and getting in my own way and self-sabotaging my life so I didn’t have to face fear took me to my lowest point. Anxiety and the will to live forced me to look at it straight in the eye. I’ve had to learn to live with it and have more empathy for myself and others. I’ve had to see the detrimental role that excess and consumerism and even holidays were playing in taking away the pain, rather than helping me address it so that maybe I could close the wound a little.

Those moments where I do conquer anxiety, I am able to look back and think “holy fucking shit – how did I get that done?” It doesn’t always happen (thanks again, anxiety-induced amnesia), but those moments of clarity do make stumbling in the choking fog worth it sometimes.

And for the moments where anxiety gets the best of me – I hold on for dear life and remember that I am only human, a body with a fuckton of complicated chemicals and electrical signals and desires and motivators and a lot of other weird shit that have not yet caught up to modern day society. I try my best to give myself a break and remember that this too shall pass. At the end of the day, what’s the worst that could possibly happen? Death? Pfft. That’s coming, regardless.

If I could, I would quit everything in a heartbeat. Probably even life. Anxiety shows me that I have nowhere to run, unless I myself choose the exit door. Anxiety has taught me to not quit, even when I want to so desperately. Anxiety has brought out the mother fucking fighter in me.

Sometimes, I do wish I were a little more normal. Maybe a little more confident in my capabilities or maybe a little less entranced by the spell of anxiety. But, in the moments of clarity, I can see what a gift my life has been, anxiety and all.  I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I used to lean on the holiday season to escape from anxiety. A conversation I had with a friend yesterday inadvertently reminded me of that. The steady stream of anticipation coupled with big hits of consumption left me feeling like I was in an opium den of good cheer. But a month and a half of escape only left me drowning in January and February, when there were no more oases of festivity to swim to.

Anxiety challenged me to find balance. Ironically, anxiety gave me the idea that maybe, just maybe, these same good feelings could be found every day. The only caveat was that I also would have to let a little more anxiety in every day too. By learning to live with anxiety, I’ve found myself less likely to run, a little more likely to soak in each day and a lot less likely to feel like shit when January 2 or most Sunday evenings came around.

So, as much as I would love to use the justification of Thanksgiving to put off my project for one day, I know that (annoyingly) I will be better served if I put in a few hours of work and give that icy son-of-a-bitch anxiety a warm hug. Because it means that when I do go see some friends later tonight, I won’t stuff my face or down a bunch of beer to feel free, like I have in years (and days) past, but that I’ll be in a place where I can be more appreciative and present with them.

Fuck you anxiety. But thank you for helping me find courage.