“I’ve already told you about the differences in our education systems, but to recap it quickly for Eliana let me go through it again. We actually go to school from a young age where we learn basic things, then we study subjects and then we choose something to specialize in. Where in your world someone would just work under a craftsman in most cases or in case of nobles and rich folks get some lessons, we would all be required to learn. It has its upsides, it has its downsides. Depending on how the system is executed, it gives more opportunities to different people, but there’s also a lot of problems with the quality of what is taught, the value of theory versus practice and the costs that come with it. That’s too long and far too boring of a story to tell right now, but I wanted to give you some background for this story.” The three of them were still laying there on the porch of their small house out in the forest. “I spent my youth fairly content. I felt different from a young age, but not so different that I had no feeling of belonging at all. I had friends and although I was slow to make connections and quick to tire, I was a clever girl and made up for a lot of it by pretending to know what I was doing.” Mana chuckled. “When you’re young it seems like such a good idea to pretend you’re fine. You don’t want to be different from everyone else.” She hummed a tune to the words of stand out fit in. Cobal didn’t recognize it but he assumed it was music from her old world. “Anyway, as you get older you learn that fitting in isn’t what is most important. But when you’re 11 or 12 years old and you first start secondary school it seems like the most important thing in the world.” She sat up. “I’m too old to lay down like this, I need proper posture.”
“You just need to work out more,” Cobal countered. She gave him a mean glare before smiling. “Perhaps you’re right, but I’m getting much more exercise here than I ever did in my old world, so cut me some slack please.”
“I’ll drop it.” Cobal said with a smile.
“Now then, this story takes place when I was in secondary school. I was 17 years old at this time. I was seeing a therapist at this time. A therapist is like a doctor for your mental health.” She looked at each of them to make sure they understood. “I wasn’t really feeling like my therapist and I were on the same page and felt like there was no benefit, but what did I know. One of my friends celebrated her birthday and we all went to a casino and then to a club afterwards. A casino is a place for gambling and a club is like a bar with loud music. I was hesitantly excited to go. I hadn’t fully come to terms with my mental health problems and my anxiety at this point in time but I was painfully aware that there was something not quite right. Pushing aside these negative thoughts I got in the car with the rest of my friends and set off to have a fun night. Casinos are very fun places. As someone who is very much opposed to gambling, I’m afraid to say it was a lot of fun to do. But you have to be aware that you’re not trying to make money, but you just have a certain amount of money to gamble with and by the end of the evening you’ll be broke. My friends’ parents paid for all of our chips, so we didn’t even have to pay. We didn’t get a ton of them, but more than enough to have fun for a few hours. This all went well but by the time we left the building I was already incredibly tired. Of course the rest of my friends wanted to go to a club and I wasn’t going to be the one to ruin the fun. Besides, they were my ride home so it’s not like I could easily leave.” She crossed her legs and leaned forward on her hands, staring off into the distance. Cobal could see in her eyes that she’d traveled back to that point in her life and knew that she would need a moment. After a minute she continued. “We went to the club and I tried one of the alcoholic drinks. It wasn’t terrible, but my tiredness got much worse and it also increased my anxiety. Not to mention that I started getting a headache at this point. I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the exhaustion or a combination of the two, but about thirty minutes after we entered this club I felt miserable. So I found myself in the middle of a crowd of people, music blasting from the speakers, and nowhere to really go.” She looked at Eliana. “I know that panic attacks can be very different for different people but for me it feels like an intense desire to be elsewhere. To be somewhere safe and quiet. So I ran. I ran through the crowd, bumping into several people and eventually making my way outside. We were close to the beach so I ran down the stairs and sat on the beach, staring off into the night’s sky.” She looked up. “Kind of like we are right now. Even back then the night sky had a calming effect on me. After a few moments, one of my friends’ parents came over to check if I was okay. I told them I was better, I just needed some quiet. My friend’s father then sat with me, quietly, and I slowly regained my composure. We waited on the beach until the rest of them were also done partying. Some of them were worried about me so they left earlier than they probably wanted to. I felt so guilty for days after that, like I ruined the party. I don’t think my friends ever blamed me, and I learned a valuable lesson that day, but whenever I think back to it, I do start to feel anxious.” She let out a deep breath. “Even now I can feel my heart beating far too fast and I’m sweaty. I might jump back into the water to clean up,” she said with a chuckle. “So yeah, not a dangerous adventure in a strange jungle but I’m afraid my stories from my old world aren’t nearly as intense as yours.”
Quiet filled the space before Eliana spoke up. “I’m not going to lie, there were quite a few words in there that I didn’t really understand. But there’s a feeling you described that resonated with me and I think that’s what is important. There’s many people out there that are broken, and we are all different in a sense, but we can learn from each other and make each other stronger.”
Mana smiled. “That’s a good outlook to have.”
“So how did that all get resolved?” Cobal asked.
“Well, you know, there wasn’t any actual problem of course, anxiety can come from things that shouldn’t be scary. The whole idea is that our fight or flight kicks in at the wrong moment. When you see a big fiery beast that’s about to attack you, you don’t need your thinking skills, you need to either fight back or flee. When it comes to anxiety, people will get that feeling and want to flee for things that don’t threaten their life. So your body has the same reaction to standing in a club as it has to finding a dangerous beast. When the moment passes, you realize that there was nothing to be scared about and you can get a feeling of shame wash over you. That’s what happened to me, at least. I felt really bad for all my friends who had to cut their fun evening short for me. They didn’t complain and we stayed friends for a while after that so clearly they didn’t blame me for it, but these things gnaw at you when you can’t sleep at night and will only make the anxiety worse in the long run.”
Cobal listened intently to Mana’s story. It wasn’t something he could relate to at all. Setting aside the crazy things that happened in her world, he just didn’t have these anxiety attacks. He had his own worries of course. He was worried for his brother, and adding to that was his worry that there was something strange going on. It was easier when he just thought his brother was being held ransom. That was easy enough to understand. But not knowing why his brother seemingly left out of his own was scarier. He was worried about the threat of war. His father had luckily listened to them and hadn’t started an aggressive campaign yet but he felt like the clock was ticking and if he took too long in finding his brother, fighting would start to break out at the border. Having walked through part of this country, Cobal knew that the people themselves had nothing to do with any of this. They were no longer strange folks across a border, they were just normal people. It was weird to him that just being here for a short time gave him such a different perspective already. His worries seemed more tangible than Mana’s worries, but he had smaller worries. He worried the hero would hate him for summoning her from her own world, he worried that she’d get up and leave one day, and he would be lost. He worried that they wouldn’t find his brother or even worse, that they would find his brother. The more he thought about it, the more he started to realize that his ideas about anxiety and stress were changing. He chuckled.
“What’s funny?” Eliana asked.
“Oh, nothing, I was just thinking how much has changed in such a short time.”
Eliana stood up and stretched her arms and back. “That’s how it always is. We stagnate for years until suddenly years worth of events happen in a few days. Life comes at you in waves and the best we can do is let the waves take us. Fighting against the tide is a lost cause. You know what they say about getting stuck in a riptide, you don’t swim against the waves, you swim alongside the waves until you find a moment in time where the waves have calmed down and you are back in control.”
“So what you’re saying is that living your life is kind of like swimming in the ocean?”
Mana started laughing loudly.
“Did I say something funny?” Cobal asked.
“No, but you reminded me of something I heard a long time ago that’s funny.” She wiped a tear of laughter from the corner of her eye. “Life is like a box of pastries.”
“Why is that?”
“You never know what you’ll get.” They all laughed. With the night calm and cool, they continued to talk for hours until they ran out of things to talk about. Eliana was the first to go to bed but Mana and Cobal followed shortly after. As Cobal put the covers over himself he let out a deep sigh. He felt at ease for the first time in a while, comfortable in a strange place. His worries for the future may not be fully gone, but sharing in the worries and anxieties of others strangely put him at ease. He wondered if this was something that should be more common in his kingdom. Perhaps teach doctors that the mind is just as important as the body. He would have to ask Mana about her opinion in the morning. But for now he could already feel the warm embrace of sleep and he was not about to say no to some rest. His mind may be at ease but his body was exhausted. Before he fully finished that thought he was asleep.
Opal Kaharis 