The first time I realized my anxiety was overwhelming, I was four years old.
I had been up all night studying, trying to figure out what I would need to know for my entrance exam for Princess Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns. I blinked once- it was perhaps four in the morning at that time- and when I reopened my eyes, the letters were all mixed up and out of order. I felt a panic I would feel many times over the years, but that was the first time. Not unlike the chemicals in your brain that give you a high when you first try a narcotic, that first rush of panic was the most memorable one.
My brain isn’t working! I remember thinking that clear as day. I was panicking. If I couldn’t read, I was going to fail before I even started school! I hadn’t been able to think straight. I’d looked around frantically and found a cup of different colored highlighters. Mom had allowed me to have a desk in my room, and in the candlelit darkness, the neon colors called to me in a sort of siren song. I grabbed one of the highlighters- the pink one, I remember it perfectly- and started to uncap it. I realized a moment later that if the letters were all scrambled, I wouldn’t be able to know what was most important.
The frenzied kinetic energy inside of me screamed at me to do something! I looked back at the highlighter cup, and grabbed all of them. I started rearranging them into shapes- Squares, triangles, stars, a hexagon. Then I arranged them into different orders of color. Pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, in order of preference, of gradient colors, of brightest to dullest, and on and on and on. It calmed me down, gave me a purpose. Rearranging those highlighters made me feel calm, neat, orderly. It gave me a task to complete, something I desperately needed, and calmed me enough to make me realize I needed to sleep.
That was the moment that started my illness. A supposed one-time response to a moment of panic would snowball into a knee-jerk response. It was just that simple. Given my history, one might be inclined to think that the start of my neuroses would be more dramatic. But it wasn’t. It was just one moment that defined my responses to fear. That was all.
My studying stayed as constant as ever. I didn’t push myself as hard as I did that time again, not for a long while, but when I got worried or nervous, I found myself organizing and reorganizing things, color coating things. I checked and rechecked doors. It began as something I did to take the edge off of my fears and think rationally, and evolved into something consumed my time, was constantly needed to reassure me. Being a naturally anxious person- possibly only outranked by Fluttershy- made a seamless transition from something I did occasionally, to something I had to do to keep calm.
The problem is, I cannot pinpoint the exact moment the transition occurred. Was it the day my brother Shining Armor left to train for the Royal Guard? Was it when Spike grew out of his hatchling days and into a toddler that I had to keep an eye on constantly? Or maybe when I realized how different I was from the ponies around me, wanting to cultivate knowledge rather than friendship? I don’t know to this day. All I know is my need to be organized, to reorganize things, to check things several times, took on a life of it’s own without my permission. As the expectations of being Princess Celestia’s student piled upon me, the need to organize, check and recheck became sharper, more painful. I had to do it or else the sky would fall down on me.
It went something like this: Princess Celestia would give me an assignment due in a month. A thought of That isn’t enough time to do this well or I’m going to fail this assignment and out of magic school would float through my head. Suddenly, I would wonder if I had really reorganized the reference section of my library last Tuesday like I thought I had. I’d use my magic to take it all down, and start over again. I’d check and recheck that titles were in alphabetical order, I’d organize in alphabetical order, or occasionally by color gradient if I was feeling particularly picky about that. And then, when I was done, there would be a beautiful moment of calm afterward, where I knew everything was okay. I’d made order from chaos, and it was beautiful. But then, however much time later, that wondering of did I reorganize the reference/history/classics/Spellbook Section? Would hit me again, and I would have to do it all over again. A never-ending spiral of getting tied up in my thoughts and doing things to stop them.
I recall, before I moved into the castle permanently, my parents noticing my obsessive behavior and taking me to a therapist. I don’t remember too much about that particular visit, or the mare whom I saw. What I remember of her was limited to the color of her blonde, glossy mane and sky blue eyes. What I really remember of her was what disarray her bookshelf was in. She allowed me to rearrange it while we talked. What we spoke of was really something I can’t remember. What I could assume was discussed was likely something along the lines of my love for books, and how good it felt to organize them. If we discussed why I needed to do that, and I gave an answer, I don’t know what it was. I saw her maybe three times before I left for the Castle. I don’t remember her voice much, but I do remember how soothing and gentle she sounded. Her voice reminded me somewhat of my Mother comforting me from a nightmare when I was little.
After I moved into the castle in Canterlot, my Anxiety lessened quite a bit. I’d been given a space in the library and I could spend all my free time either reading or reorganizing those books to suit my likes. At my parents’ home I’d only had the bookshelf in my room, the bookshelf in the living room, and the one in my brother’s room (though his was mainly full of comics). Now, I had an entire library at my disposal to organize and reorganize.
It was perhaps the closest thing to heaven I might have ever felt.
Spike at that time was big enough to help me, occasionally sending scrolls, and sometimes getting books down for me. He was such a little gentledrake about the matter. He never once questioned my need to organize and reorganize. I’d begun the habit before he’d been entrusted to my care, and to him that was just how things were. He accepted my neurosis and never judged me for having it. The only time he ever questioned my judgement was when I was worked into a lather and needed a jolt out of my obsessive ways. It was the utmost unconditional acceptance that he held for me, and to this day is the thing I am the most grateful for, because if I was having a bad day, I knew I could run things by him and never worry about him being judgemental.
I learned a while after leaving Canterlot Castle the word for what my mind did with pretty much any situation that could have a negative outcome. I would blow it up in my mind to something so huge that I couldn’t stop worrying. I found the word one day studying the dictionary. Catastrophizing. Exaggerating circumstances or consequences so that they were so magnified in your mind they spelled doom. I hate to admit it, but it was quite accurate to what I was doing. I just didn’t know it for a long time.
Then came the time when Princess Celestia sent me to Ponyville. It opened up a brand new can of worms for my anxiety, and yet in other ways closed others. It was quite odd, really. In some ways the distance between me, Canterlot, and my teacher, helped me. The pressure on me wasn’t as high, the internal demand I put on myself wasn’t nearly as large. And yet, there were more anxieties too. Because now I had friends who depended on me, I was living outside of the realm of immediate assistance from my family, and- obviously- I’d had to save Equestria a time or two.
My friends helped me a lot with my worrying, my intrusive thoughts. I never quite got over the compulsions of organizing and reorganizing, however. I didn’t check doors at all though. I thought that had to mean something… Didn’t it?
However, I still had days that were absolutely horrific. I remember shortly after the Golden Oak Library was destroyed and my castle was erected, that I went into a terrible frenzy. I’d found the library in my castle, and spent hours and hours reorganizing them, but there was no release of satisfaction that time.
That terrified me. I needed to organize something immediately. I’d ran to the kitchen and reorganized the pantry, but it still wasn’t enough. I’d taken a shower, scalding myself with the heat, just to try and make my thoughts stop spiraling.
Something terrible happened. You couldn’t stop it. Your friends were in danger. Your home was destroyed. You nearly lost everything you cared about. What if you hadn’t been able to save your friends? Rainbow Dash would have never flown again, Fluttershy wouldn’t have been able to communicate with her animal friends, Rarity wouldn’t have been able to sew… And if you had made one wrong choice, they might have been hurt.
I couldn’t stop the spiral. I did everything to try. I reorganized everything in the castle, I took a scalding shower, I tried to clean everything in sight to just try and make it stop, but it wasn’t enough. I’d absolutely lost my mind. I don’t remember much about what happened with my cleaning frenzy, but from what Spike told me I was curled up on the floor crying and trying to reorganize a cluster of highlighters, muttering to myself and unable to stop.
He had called Princess Celestia in a panic, and she’d come and snapped me out of it. I’d responded to her voice as well as ever, and she’d taken me to the hospital. I’d stayed there for a few days and taken a little blue pill to help calm me down, writing furiously on scrolls with quills and trying to get all the words inside of my head onto paper in hopes of trying to stop it all.
Finally, after three days, I was… Stable, more or less. But I had begun avoiding the castle because of my fears. It wasn’t a home at all. It was a place that grew when my fears had nearly come true. But when my friends redecorated the castle and put all of my memories in the map room, It somehow calmed me down. To this day I still cannot articulate in words how it helped me. I’ve racked my brain trying to understand why that gesture helped me so much. The closest reason I can think of that might make sense was that it was permanent reminder that I wasn’t as alone as I felt sometimes. Maybe there was more to it than that. I’m not sure.
My friends were remarkably understanding about my predicament, and encouraged me to tell them when I felt that need or had those bad thoughts, and It’s helped quite a bit. But I’ve still considered going back to therapy. Even though, as a princess now, my schedule didn’t permit for that kind of disconnect from the world.
I still find the need to schedule, organize, and color coat. But it’s easier now, with my friends helping me. I still spiral sometimes, when I can’t stop thinking. But there’s one saying that rings true for me in all of this.
Once you hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.