This Is Why Finding Love Seems Impossible When You Have Anxiety

It literally seems impossible. Especially in our society today with online dating and endless people to swipe through, when you have anxiety — it’s overwhelming. It’s too much. Too many people and prospects. It’s too exhausting.

For me, when I download Tinder or Bumble, I immediately want to delete it. I’m bombarded with so many thoughts in my head telling me there’s no point to this. I’m constantly flooded with my anxiety screaming at me that it’s not worth it. And that I should give up on finding love. To just stop, because I’m broken.

And no one loves a broken girl.

And anxiety makes me feel broken.

When I go on dates, I get petrified that I will develop feelings. Because feelings mean emotions and heartache and pain. And it’s easer to just feel numb. It’s easier to just feel nothing, right?

I get so nervous that they won’t like me yet, I get more scared that they will like me. I haven’t been in a relationship in a few years, and the idea of it feels so foreign and far away from me.

The idea of love seems thousands of miles away from where I am now.

And I know deep down that I want it. That I want to fall in love again. And I know I want to eventually find it again. I want to feel that rush and those butterflies. I want to have a first kiss and actually have it feel right. I want to get giddy and call up my friends in excitement that I finally found someone worthwhile. That I finally found someone after waiting for so long. I want to do all of that. 

And I want to hear myself say ‘I love you’ and not question it. And I want to not be so terrified when someone says it back to me.

I don’t understand why it is so hard. Why it’s so hard for me to believe that it will happen to me one day. I don’t know why it’s so hard to picture it. To picture what he looks like, to hear his laugh, and to see myself blushing at his compliments.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard for me to see it.

I’ve been in love before. And it’s so damn beautiful. It’s so damn wonderful and it feels like you will never stop flying. Not even anxiety can take that feeling away.

But when it ends and crashes and burns, I think it’s just too much. Too much for me to wrap my brain around the fact that it’s not there anymore. And my anxiety takes over, and screams into my headspace, that I’ll never get it again. That I fucked up. That karma is real.

And so, it seems like it will never happen. Because I keep telling myself that it’s so hard and rare and difficult. I keep telling myself that I’m better off alone because the pain of losing love is too terrible to fathom. I keep telling myself that maybe I was meant to just experience love once.

But I know that’s just the anxiety talking. That’s just the overthinking and the demons taking over. It’s not me. It’s not my authentic self stating the truth.

Because truthfully, I want to fall and never look back. I want to taste love in my lips and never let it go. I want it so badly one day, and all my anxiety does is tell me no. All my anxiety does is laugh.

All my anxiety does is tell me that it’s impossible. And impossible things never happen to a girl like me.