Exposing Anxiety

Anxiety, 

I see you, I feel you, I taste you. 

I see you anxiously waiting to feed my thoughts with a crippling tongue. Separating my focus to my stresses, hindering my understanding to be me. I feel you gripping my throat with sharp hands, holding firm so I may not breath. Leaving me lost of words, making a fool to a peering eyes, entertained I see, by the building of my demise. I taste you on my lips, on my tongue, tingling like the injection of a needle. Numbing my capacity to pronounce my thoughts, my ideas, my dreams. 

I see you crawling defenseless from the abyss of disease. Falling at my feet, fooling me as if you are broken and need of home. Only to burden my shoulders and steal the fruits of my labor and you speak, as if you will never be gone. And I see you laugh with thrill as you watch my mangled thoughts keep me locked. Pulling each from the other like tangled twine. Only to find that you have tied knots to each side. I see you chattering among evil swine. Conspiring to design, to leave me broken long before you say goodbye. You found the perfect home, at least till I find a reason to fly.  

I feel you linger with hot breath, shadowing me like flies to rot. Licking at my existence of happiness, enjoyment with each passing moment. And like sickness, it is you I caught. Now ill, I am steadily fraught.  Wondering, as sweat billows my brow, if I will ever be me, ever be free of my wretched being. I feel you cut my heart, splitting me of hope, faith, and love. Never to listen to what is above. Leaving  me only to dangers of pity, ache, and heavy thoughts. Thoughts that drown me from myself, from those around me. Thoughts that leave me scratching the walls of my mind, like a mad man lost to copious amounts of hell. Scratching till the bleeding my thoughts become the escape of my presence. What is left for you to swell, can can't you tell? My soul is dried like an abandoned well. Nothing left to quench my thirst, nor for the people who seek my help. 

When will you let me be, when will you let me sleep?

I taste you in my thinking as eyes are shut, as dreams become not of dreams, but of nightmares, of hell. Dreams that soil with darkness, leaving me to a nervous spell. Dreams that scream till my lips are dry from sweat I secrete that you savor oh so well from the other side of my conscious cell. As demons swallow my key that would set me free, acting noble they do, as if they caught me in a coup, but they smile with glee and taste me as I bleed. They stand with red ties and bloody suits, waiting for me to sell, waiting for me to never tell. To open my soul and let them compel. To hand it over it like flesh to a moral-less motel, so I may descend their gnarled stairwell.  I taste you upon my dry tongue as I stand looking upon others, losing my taste for confidence, my taste for my own self. You have smothered my cravings for life, now I hide beneath the trembling of my own flesh. Never to be still and never to be relaxed, tense from the moment I wake, to the moment I sleep. 

I look upon my reflection and what do I see? I see you, I see anxiety twisting my image beyond all degree. I see anxiety laughing in the pool of my suffering. Drinking to my primitive chaos, drinking, to my dull thoughts. It smiles with crooked teeth and fiery skin as I lay inside my head with treason. Piercing with raw disorder all things that were me. Things that designed my smiles and curated my laughter. Now tedious and disruptive am I, I fall to the purgatory of self, consuming the dead of anxiety and living below the shadows. 

My eyes, sunken by insomnia and my soul, driven mad by anxiety. 

Notes:

(The reading above are my thoughts and feelings on my anxiety that once crippled my very happiness to the confines of my sheets. To the point where my reality was diminished by the dwelling of other’s words, my own false mental creations, and my past. Anxiety, fear, and depression are all family. A family many of us have to deal with in life. And I believe the only way to defeat any of them, is to pull them from their shadows and display them for your world to see. To cut the head from the snake and let it bleed in front of the others. The mental struggles we engage in, many times are created through lies we tell ourselves. Lies we believe from lack of self-love. Lack of self-care and the courage to face them. Below are words I use to describe how anxiety was in my life. I still deal with it from time to time. But it no longer does it dictate my view of the world or myself. Writing my thoughts down of my struggles has significantly helped me. So hopefully reading my pain will help you discover your ability to get through your pain and write it down.)