Hello Anxiety, you bitter pill!
Did I swallow you willingly? Or were you shoved down my throat?
I can’t remember, just like I forget about the migraine pill I may or may not have had after you kicked in
You stay with me, so you are like a best friend
But you don’t leave once you come, so you are my worst enemy
You make me imagine possibilities giving me hope, but those are ugly whisperings so I have to give myself a physical walk to shake you off
Oh, but you aren’t so easy to lose, are you, you sneaky little thing!
You start like one heartbeat too hard, then two, then suddenly, so many more
You come climbing up my throat and reach my ears and grab my head and suddenly my vision is distorted
And my throat! Oh it seizes up. It is trying to breathe and also clamp up and save all the breath inside, because for living I must have the air, and if I inhale or exhale, the worst words and screams and everything red will come forth
I fear you worse than I fear a lot of things
But you love me equally as much I suppose
For the more I keep you away, and don’t look you in the eye, and work hard about nullifying your existence, you are only hiding in some vein or nerve or some hormones of mine, so you can come back leaping and excited when the weather in the vicinity is just right
I want to hate the people who bring you to me
For you rarely come of your own volition
But people! Oh, sweet people! They know just how to tickle you and taunt you and tempt you to come take hold of me
So, hello Anxiety, now that you’re here
Will you stay a while? I suppose you will
Shall we get some coffee, while we are at it, grabbing onto each other like this is the only valid feeling, like there’s no peace, no happiness, no sense of justice anywhere, so we might as well get comfortable, sleep it off, or not, stay silent but think a lot
And maybe, just maybe as I get through the day, you will wander off
Or not, so maybe, just maybe, I will call up my man and cry my lungs out
Or not, so maybe, just maybe, you can quiet down now, now that I have swallowed you, and given you my time, and space, and a whole body bristling with negative energy potent enough to burn holes in some electric or magnetic or space-time fabric of the universe, and maybe, please, I say, maybe you can just, go to sleep now, just for now, and think of this as my sweet lullaby, where I am saying, I know you won’t ever go, so no goodbyes, but for now your work is done, and I would like to get back, to the kind of life, where so many of your clones and cousins are waiting to make their home in me and I have to meander my way through them too, so when later tonight I go to bed, I can have a painless, dreamless slumber instead of foaming, and gasping and feeling so much of the weight of the world’s worst things in me, that nothing, nothing would bring respite, except going, Poof!