Anxiety and Why I Hate "Nevermind"

"Hey Bryn!"

"Yeah?"

"... Actually, nevermind."

Don't ever do this. I'm not joking.

I've explained to a lot of people how much this bothers me, and many seem to misinterpret it as a pet-peeve, a minor annoyance. This is not the case. To those of you without anxiety, this is something known as an anxiety trigger. Anxiety triggers are pretty self-explanatory in that they're just something that can cause anxiety to flare up, and often times they can literally come from anything. In this case, something as illogical and random as the word "Nevermind."

I would explain why this makes me feel anxious, but I feel that it would be more clear, and entertaining to just complete this conversation including any and all anxiety related thoughts.


"No, really, tell me." What is it? Why aren't they telling me? Did they realize it was something bad? Something I shouldn't know? Something that would bother me or offend me? They started telling me in the first place so it can't be that bad.

"Nah, it's fine. It's not important."

"Seriously, tell me." It's not fine. Why can't you just tell me? If it's unimportant, then there should be no harm in just telling me. There must be a reason to keep it from me.

"Jeez dude, it's no big deal."

"You started telling me in the first place, just finish it." It IS a big deal. You are withholding information that I would otherwise have known if you simply finished your sentence. Communication is key in all relationships, and you JUST BROKE THAT!

"Why do you want to know so badly?"

"Cause you started telling me already!" Is that really not obvious!? Why do you want to keep it from me so badly!?

"Fine. Jeez. I was just gonna ask if we had homework, but I remembered we did."

"Oh, okay." FUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Yeah, so there's a glimpse into the inner shenanigans of my brain. I've had points in which I've been unable to speak to a person without thinking back to a time when they did this, and I never found out what they were going to say. It is absolutely maddening.

So please, do NOT do this.

Chosen Insomnia and Why I Hate Sleep

"Life is short."

Don't tell this to an anxious person. Seriously. I've spent my entire life panicking about the passage of time, growing old, dying, and what may or may not come after, and it's likely I'll continue to spend my life panicking about these things. It's likely I'll write more about these because I do think about them, but I don't need to be reminded of these things, especially when the person saying it is usually trying to inspire me or cheer me up.

I don't like calling myself an insomniac. I know several people who have legitimate insomnia, and I know that they hate it, and they suffer for it. I also know a lot of teenagers who stay up until midnight playing video games or watching TV shows and insist they've got such awful insomnia. The reason I dislike referring to myself as an insomniac, is because I'm probably closer to the second, than the first, although I think my intentions may be a little different.

I like thinking. Even when I'm doing nothing at all, I enjoy sitting, and thinking about anything that comes to mind. Admittedly sometimes my tendency to think betrays me (thanks anxiety), but I'd still rather have negative thoughts, than no thoughts at all. I also like being productive or doing something that engages my brain, whether that's playing video games, or having conversations with people.

So what does all the mumbo jumbo up above this point add up to?

I really don't like sleeping.

Sleeping takes away the time in which I could be thinking, doing something. According to a statistic I heard a while ago that may or may not be fully accurate, humans spend around a third of their lives sleeping. As it stands, by the time I'm seventy, I'll only remember a fraction of my conscious life, the rest will have been forgotten, or slept through. That's why I stay up until two in the morning doing practically nothing at all, but to me, a conscious nothing wins over an unconscious nothing any day. If I were to refer to myself as an insomniac, I'd much prefer the term "Insomniac By Choice." I don't sleep, not because of any chemical imbalance in my brain, or because I can't sleep due to racing thoughts, it's simply a matter of choice.

I often hear it argued that the quality of life would be better with more sleep, but I guess the anxious mathematician in me is looking for quantity over quality. I could probably come up with some complex math formula that determines at what point the benefits of being conscious stop outweighing the loss in quality of my time spent conscious.

Although I suppose it is rather ironic that I planned on writing this last night, but rather abruptly fell asleep.

Social Harm and Why I Believe Human Instinct Is Dying

You catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye. Something is flying towards you fast. You don't know what, but you don't want it to hit you. You don't want it to hurt you. In a split second, your brain is reacting, moving your body to try to get you out of harms way. Then the pencil whizzes past you,  a good five feet from where you were sitting, and everyone laughs cause you jumped up out of your seat for it.

Why'd you do it? Why'd you jump? Well, I think the answer is rather simple. Self preservation.

You didn't know what the pencil was, you just knew it was coming towards you, and it could have been dangerous. You didn't need to know what it was, or how close it would come to you to react and try to stop yourself from being hurt. It's not just human instinct, it's animal instinct. Every living creature wants to try to keep itself safe. Well, used to at least.

I call it "Social Harm" although I'm sure there's a real soc/psych term for it. I guess one could say it's a subcategory of "Emotional Harm". Essentially, any situation in which a person is hurt emotionally due to a poor decision made in a social situation.

The example I see most frequently:

A teenage girl or boy (Person A) develops a crush on a male or female (Person B). Ah, young love, but wait. Person A isn't too sure about Person B. I mean, maybe Person B has cheated on all their previous girl/boyfriends, or perhaps Person B is well known for being manipulative or cruel, or in some cases, Person B is actually dangerous.

Now the problem at this point, arises when Person B likes Person A back. Person B will probably act incredibly sweet or kind to Person A, because, well, they like them and want to win them over. This will most likely make Person A very happy, and Person A will abandon all worries or fears, and rush passionately into Person B's arms, happy to be with the one they "truly love".

So why am I writing about this?

It pisses me off.

I've known a LOT of Person As in my life, and Person B isn't always a Person, sometimes it's Drug B, or Alcohol B, or essentially any poor decision, in which Person A had reasonable doubt to begin with, but tossed it aside completely.

I've talked to a LOT of Person As. I hear the usual "I'm worried about this..." or "What if he/she does this..." and my response is almost an instantaneous reflex to me now.

"Don't do it."

That doesn't mean don't do it ever. It just means don't do it so long as you're doubting it so much in your head. If you can say "This is a bad idea," then don't do it! Yet most people do it anyways. I don't know why, maybe it's because it's the more fun decision at the time, but more often than not they know everything that will go wrong before it even does, and so do I.

And the worst thing anybody can possibly say is "Oh well, I'll learn my lesson," or "When it happens, I'll deserve it." You won't learn your lesson, because you already HAVE learned your lesson. You've already identified everything wrong with your decision, and you're doing it anyways!

Also, I've grown tired of hearing "Well then you can say 'I told you so.'" No, odds are I'm talking to you because I CARE about you. Whenever the consequences for your bad decision catches up to you, I guarantee I'll be too busy wishing it never happened and trying to help you through the aftermath to even think of saying those words.

I see so many people do this on a regular basis, and I simply don't understand how a living being programmed to survive and preserve itself can choose to do something knowing full well that they're making a bad decision that will likely result in their being hurt.

So, why would you dodge a near harmless pencil flying at your face, but not months or years worth of psychological damage or drug addiction? The latter even gave you more warning!

Obnoxious Teen Habits and Why I Clutch My Phone

When I was maybe twelve or thirteen, I never believed for a second that I would do anything that resembled an "ordinary teenager". Of course I never did anything like that, and I've been completely mature and well-mannered my entire life. Short blog. End of Line.

Not really. The main thing I notice lately, is that I've become one of "those" teenagers. You know? The ones who are sitting at a restaurant on their smartphones. Yeah, them. The ones who get glared at cause they pull out their phone mid conversation just to check something. I do it, and I think it's obnoxious.

Lately I've been thinking about why it is I do it. My inner geek screams with joy at the idea of keeping something many times more powerful than the computers for the original moon landing. The intellectual in me raises his arms in celebration at the idea of having constant access to the information of the internet.

These, however, are just some perks.

The part of me that is social, sits quietly in a chair, smiling like a fool at the concept of having a connection. Having communication with anybody I know, at all times, and only a few button presses away. I'm sure at another point I'll talk about the struggle that is extroverted versus introverted feelings, but to simplify things now, I enjoy communication and conversation, and what I believe to be one of the world's greatest tools for that, sits in my pocket at all times.

So, does that make it any less obnoxious when I'm sitting face to face with a human being, holding a conversation, and I choose to pull out my phone to check on a virtual one? No, not really, but it's nice to feel connected to everybody sometimes.

And like, OMG, why would like anyone want to like listen to their PARENTS? Like, YOLO.

A Brief Introduction

My name is Bryn. It's a welsh name that roughly means "a hill or mound".

I am a male. Yes, a male named Bryn, trust me, it's not that weird. Just ask the Europeans, naming a girl Bryn is like naming a girl Fred, then again, the TV show Angel pulled that off.

I'm seventeen years old, which means I've traveled somewhere around 1.58 billion miles in an orbit. It sounds impressive, but I've actually only ever been within 600 miles from my home town my entire life.

I go to a small high school. Do I like it? Sometimes I do. Other times I don't. It's likely if you're still reading beyond this introduction that you'll hear a bit about both times.

I'm a computer geek, and gamer. Technology plays an incredibly important role in my life, for a variety of reasons.

Much like my parents, I am a highly anxious individual, to the point in which it can make life difficult. It's very likely I will write a lot about this.

Why am I writing this? The people and things that exist in day to day life often confuse me and frustrate me. A lot of people tell me this is normal for a teenager, but it doesn't make it any less important. Many of the things in life simply don't make any sense to me at all, and I've spent my seventeen years trying to figure them out. I suppose if anything my goal is to put my thoughts in writing, and to let anyone who's interested take a look at how I see things.

Either that, or I'm just bored.