I spent $300 on an outfit for this month’s two weddings. My newly-married friend told me I needed to wear something nice! I spent a lot of emotional energy and time thinking about what to wear. I wanted something that was nice enough, that’d help me feel comfortable, and that wasn’t fancy. Ties, jackets, and dress shirts were out. I wanted everyday clothes. I bought expensive vegan Doc Marten’s shoes, a nice solid-colored flannel shirt, and a nice pair of pants and new socks. I felt great about what I found and marveled that it seemed both nice and in my style.

A few days ago, a day before my buddy’s wedding, I re-read the invitation and at the bottom it said “dress code: semi-formal.” Confused, running to ChatGPT for answers, it told me semi-formal meant a suit and tie, with a matching belt and shoes. Panicking, I looked at more websites, like Wikipedia, and did some Google image searches, and they all confirmed it: my comfy new outfit did not make the cut.

It’s hard to describe the spiral that happened; the anxiety that swept in. I could see the oncoming disaster crystal-clear in my mind: walking into the wedding as my schlub self, standing before a sea of men in stylish suits with matching leather shoes and belts, silk ties to their waists. I, alone a mess, standing before them. Maybe some whispering. Maybe my friend, embarrassed.

I’m not exaggerating. I came close to canceling. My anxiety was an 8 out of 10. In the hour before the wedding I spent 30 minutes with ChatGPT having it help me explore ways of explaining why I wasn’t dressed appropriately. It suggested, “I tend to dress simply, it’s part of my Quaker values to focus on the essentials and keep things plain.” I thought, “That might work!”

The evil genius of this anxiety was how un-insane it felt. It seemed perfectly rational. Not going to my friend’s wedding? Reasonable.

I walked into the wedding venue and my story fell down like a house of cards. Almost no one wore a full suit. And another gay guy paired his jacket and tie with daisy dukes and cowboy boots! The humor of these short-shorts pointed to the insanity of my story, which moments before felt as real as concrete. Now all that remained of it was disbelief and the laughter coming from my face.

But to go from intense anxiety and stress to laughter left me with more than relief. It also left embarrassment. How’d I allow my mind to make such a crazy story, and how’d I believe it so devoutly? How did I spend 24 hours as a mess, for nothing?

The emotional whiplash of going from insanity to clarity in an instant, that’s what I explored in therapy tonight. I told the story with a lot of humor, and I was caught off-guard by the intensity of the emotions that started to come up. The complete unnecessariness of all that anxiety and worry became clear. The invitation card wasn’t the source of my emotions. The suffering came from me! I made all that stress up. And I didn’t need to.

And I could see that the stress was much older than this wedding. I could see the same fear throughout my high school experience. Every day, for four years, I went to school marinated in the same stress and drenched in anxiety. And I could see how high school wasn’t the source of my misery any more than the wedding invite was. My mind made the suffering then, just as it did last week. I made it all up, out of love for myself, to keep me safe.

I sat quietly in therapy with my eyes shut, and in just a few minutes my mind seemed to re-record every high school memory. I saw them plainly, without all the anxiety, stress, and fear for my life. No filters or stories piled on top. Grief and relief poured out in tears.

Now, somehow changed; woven through my high school memories are some threads of happiness that I couldn’t see before and that I had forgotten all about.