Anxiety

I feel my heart begin to pound and my hands begin to sweat.

My thoughts begin to race and I feel like I may faint.

I begin to shake and hyperventilate. 

My world comes crashing down, but only in my head. 

The world outside around me, everything seems fine. 

From the outside, it is easy to think that someone’s got it all figured out. 

Because my hair is done and my makeup is on, I must have it all figured out. 

As if my mental demons should be written across my forehead.

And they assume if they can’t see it then it’s not real

As if the pain doesn’t exist unless you are bleeding.

But sometimes the most painful demons are the ones they can’t even see. 

So, we learn how to smile, how to just grin and bear it because no one likes to talk about the tough stuff. 

Hell, I don’t like to talk about the tough stuff. 

I have anxiety. 

It feels like every single part of me is moving too fast.

Despite the constant boom of my heartbeat inside my ears, it’s like listening to a spastic drumline.

and I don't even notice I'm gritting my teeth or cracking my knuckles or rubbing my four fingers against my thumb or spinning the gold band on my middle finger.

Holding on to myself like I’m the only lifeline bridging the gap between reality on my own two feet and the anatomic sounds and feelings of fleeting rushing through me.

And I'm avoiding eye contact, not because I’m not listening to what you are saying because I am listening to the sound of my own voice hoping that through your ears it’s not on the verge of breaking because my palms are sweating and I had somehow forgotten to speak with anything behind my words other than insecurity. 

My anxiety feels like fire, unexplainably hot and frustrating as I saw the side of my cheek as if the solution to this feeling is buried in between my teeth and gums.

It feels like drowning, it feels like burning and it feels like fucking forever I imagine my feet moving faster than a marathon runner because somehow it feels I’m moving faster than the 60 seconds they’ve allowed in a minute all while I’m just playing catch on the stopwatch and it doesn’t add up like in high school math. 

I can’t carry the one or find the square root of the problem because most of the time, there is no problem.

There is no life or death situation

There is no rhyme or reason

There are just feelings and I’m feeling all of them at once. 

Some days are better than others 

Some days are worse. 

But they are just days and I’ve got more where they have come from.