I first conceived of seeing my predicament through the metaphor of a Maze a long time ago. I don't recall when. My first attempt to really communicate this metaphor came in a session with an art therapy student in 2018. That's when I drew this picture. Now I don't literally believe that I'm in such a maze. On the other hand, others typically have no concept of what exactly it is that I'm confined by, and thus metaphor is the only game in town when it comes to communication, with the possible exception of trying to explain things as one mathematician would explain an abstract concept to another. (In that case, even then, I would use visual metaphors in order to convey the intuition, alongside formal definitions as to what exactly I mean.)
Escaping The Maze
But I won't cry for yesterday There's an ordinary world Somehow I have to find And as I try to make my way To the ordinary world I will learn to survive
This Maze has been my life. Always constrained by the fear of putting a foot wrong. Those Walls of the Maze, fed by a fear-of-fear, grow like untrimmed hedges, taller and thicker. Each failed attempt to find a way out of the Maze, based on the principle that 'if at first you don't succeed, mark as tried and failed and don't try again', more Walls grow (I like the French: 'deja vu, deja essayé, ne marche pas' or more correctly 'Le déjà vu, déjà essayé, ne fonctionne pas' to describe this principle). It takes months and years to trim back such Walls, and so it has been seven years since my last earnest attempt to communicate the nature of the Maze that confines me. What you are reading now is the next attempt.
To echo the lyrics I quoted above, the words ordinary world, to me signify that life when one isn't constrained by all these Walls, a world where one can do things as the ordinary people do, a world where one's life is not dominated by these invisible Walls of Potential Anxiety. Hope of reaching such a world spurred me on for years, but I'm not sure as I write this that I have much of that hope left.
The Nature of The Walls
As I mentioned, the Walls of my Maze are made of Anxiety, or more correctly, my instinct to avoid Anxiety, or as I put it, the Anxiety Avoidance Mechanism (AAM).
The trouble with Anxiety Avoidance is that once a path to Anxiety has been found, the beginning of that path, and all the waypoints along it, also become sources of Potential Anxiety, and thus the AAM will then see that beginning and those waypoints as additional sources of Potential Anxiety to be avoided. Thus the Walls grow.
Contentment
When peace like a river attended my way When sorrows like sea billows roll Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say It is well, it is well, with my soul
I have to content myself with the reassurance that I have done my best with what life has given me. When I look back at the myriad things that, to a naive observer, it appears I could have done, in hindsight I now see that there were these invisible Walls preventing me. But I must be unselfish, and just believe that I suffer in the Maze so as to help others who suffer in their Maze, and thus to living within it, but to explain as much of its nature to others, is my immediate goal in life. The trouble is, how does one find people who have the time and willingness to listen? How does one get Puzzle Pieces to those who need them, and possibly don't even know such Pieces exist, let alone their need for them? I have yet to find a solution. But it is well with my soul: when the end comes, I can be content that I have done all I can.