POV: You’re walking into a convention center or hotel or chosen venue for a pop culture con you’ve been looking forward to the whole year. You’ve spent extra time on your makeup so that you can look as perfect as you imagine yourself to be. All of your supplies are in your bag. You’ve taken your medication and even your vitamins (good job, you say to yourself).
As you enter the exhibit hall, you start to feel an awful tightness in your chest. You’re out of breath, actually no, you’re hyperventilating at this point. The room is spinning, and you feel dizzy. The venue is too loud and crowded for you to bear. You try to ground yourself, but it’s futile. You don’t come back until after friends of yours find you. To them, you look spaced out and a bit tired. But on the inside, you’re screaming, and you feel like you’re drowning in your own skin.
This is what it’s like to have an anxiety attack at one of your favorite places to be.
I’ve been going to comic cons and anime cons for 15 years as of this October. At the tender age of 18, this girl from Brooklyn, NY, went to her first New York Comic Con in her first year of college. Comparing myself to back then to now is jarring. I was full of light and excitement whenever I entered Jacob K. Javits center years prior. So why do I feel sick to my stomach and queasy now?
I’ve noticed that over the past 3 or 4 years that I’ve been feeling uneasy when convention season starts. I started cosplaying back in 2012, where all I cared about was having fun, and if I do get lucky, I’ll have my picture taken by a few people. Now, I have to worry about numbers, creating content, and even one upping the last cosplay I did.
I even started to feel out of body experiences when I cosplay. I like to joke around and say that “I’m a chameleon” because I blend in so much and that I take different shapes when I cosplay as opposed to when I’m out of cosplay. It has gotten to the point where I hardly recognize myself when I do the most with my makeup.
My friends and even family who don’t know too much about cosplay ask me, “Who did your makeup?” Then I sheepishly reply to them,”I did.” Whenever I hear or see the phrase,”I don’t even recognize you, or “You look like such a different person,” it kind of makes my skin crawl. On the inside, I know it’s me. I’ve been me for quite a long time. But when I look in the mirror, the positive affirmations come out, but the negative thoughts do too.
Whenever I am in cosplay around my peers, I always get a “Wow, Elly, you look so different every time!” I don’t think it’s inherently bad that they say that, but it makes me feel bad. The self-doubt appears again. “Will they like me outside of cosplay?” “I always look different. Will they recognize me this time around?”
Let’s also not forget that I am a fiber artist, specifically crochet. The con crunch is so real when I have to finesse an outfit from balls and balls of yarn within a month or so.
Part of me wants to call it quits and retire from cosplaying altogether. But knowing me and how stubborn I am and how bored I get, I want to create more. I just feel like the inexplicable expectation to have an attention-grabbing post and performance anxiety makes me want to not create anything anymore.
I know I was put on this earth to create art. Whether it is through a hobby or a career. It’s hard to view whatever I create for cosplay as “content” for myself or to have some semblance of “influence” because I use this medium to express myself. I use cosplay as a means to not be myself for a weekend. But when the expectation is to post to prove that you were at an event (at least, this is how I perceive it), it ultimately feels wrong and out of place.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have fun anyway while attending these events. But the expectations plus the outside stimuli that are your peers in this art form are starting to feel a lot less fun and even authentic.
Let’s address the inauthenticity that I’ve been feeling another time. I think this is definitely a separate topic to delve into.
I am trying to figure out what to do next without feeling hopeless about having anxiety in my favorite place to be. Some of the tips I’ve worked on exploring were using the quiet area (if available), earplugs for overcrowded places, and even taking a break back in my hotel room or stepping outside.
If you have any tips or suggestions for navigating a con while anxious, please let me know.
-Elly
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