I am not sure I will ever understand what anxiety is. All I know is that when anxiety has taken control of my body, I feel trapped.  It almost feels like I am in someone else's mind but my external body remains my own.  When anxiety creeps up within me, I can no longer find comfort.  I am restless and feel disconnected from all, yet I feel everything all around me.  

Everything around me looks and feels as if it is wrapped in cellophane. From a distance you don't notice the distortion, but up close you see every flaw of the wrapping.  Every imperfect line, seal and bubble.  You find a way to ignore it, until that is when you want to take a drink from your glass.  Now you are weighing out the want and need of the water vs. the work it's going to take to unwrap the glass from the cellophane.  You think about it for too long, finding it is obvious that you really do need a drink of water.  You begin to examine the outside of the glass looking for where the wrapping ends so you can begin to peel away the plastic.  You search and search and still can't find it.  You then begin to take your fingers and dig into the plastic knowing that eventually you will feel where the wrapping ends, so that you can get your fingers beneath it and start to unravel it.  Your frustrations start to mound and you can't seem to find the seam, eventually your patience is completely gone and you just start ripping into the plastic with your nails.  You begin to accomplish something, but you feel no satisfaction from it considering you don't even understand why there was cellophane around your glass to begin with.  Your thirst is overtaking you now and that's all you can think about.  Almost animalistic, you are still fighting with the plastic and then suddenly you rip through.  As the final piece of the plastic seal flies off, your water then spills everywhere. You were no longer concerned with your approach and you just wanted to get that ******* plastic off the glass so you could have a drink of your water.  

Now you are back to square one.  Actually you are further away from the original goal of drinking the water because your glass is empty.  The coffee table has spilt water all over the top of it.  The coaster you had your glass resting on has water beneath it.  You then look towards the carpet and you see a significant puddle quickly saturating the fibers.  You sit there for a moment and just internally explode, I mean all you wanted was a ******* drink of water.  After throwing your internal pity party, you get up and walk into the kitchen and begin to look for paper towels.  As you look on the counter you notice that someone had used the last paper towel on the roll and they did not replace it.  You open the pantry to find a replacement remembering that you had just gone to Costco and the new rolls were still in the garage in the car.  You then have to find your purse, which should be on the kitchen table, but when you glance over your purse is nowhere to be found.  Now remembering that you left your purse upstairs in your office as you had been paying your monthly bills and never brought it back downstairs.  You then start to think about how much money you had just spent on your car payment, your mortgage, your electricity…. all the normal life stuff which makes you want to violently *****.  

Huffing you realize that you have to take your pouty *** upstairs to get your purse to retrieve your car keys, which will immediately equate in you going down two flights of stairs just to get to the garage. All with the simple mission of getting the paper towels that you were too lazy to bring up right after you got back from the store. Your brain then has a sudden intrusion and you are overwhelmed with the memory when Theo made you cry because you simply forgot to buy his deodorant. He always made you feel worthless and bothersome.  You shake that memory from your thoughts, you don't dismiss it you just simply push it aside.  Continuing to blame yourself for all that you are too dumb to do.  "Why can't you just be a normal adult and when you go shopping remember to just bring all of your groceries inside instead of waiting until there is an urgent need for something like the paper towels that have been your trunk now for over a week?”  As you get to your car, you open the trunk and then realize you had left the interior light on.  With a sudden sigh of relief you now can see the reason why you spilled your glass of water and are glad that you had to come downstairs to the car. Otherwise the car would have died had the light stayed on all night.  You then turn off the light, test the car to make sure the battery turns on, which it does.  You grab the paper towels and go back upstairs to start to clean up the mess.  

You then blink again and remember that everything around you is covered in cellophane.  You are reminded that even the newly purchased paper towels are somehow covered in plastic.  This will be easier than the glass of water to get into though.  I quickly rip through the plastic and get the first roll and start drying everything off.  As I finish, I pause and think about everything that had just transpired.  Why didn’t I think about just grabbing a towel from the drawer instead of staying fixated on using the paper towels?  Why does it always seem that I can't ever focus on anything or I am hyper focused on the wrong things?  Anxiety to me is like cellophane.  There is this extra layer of complication that is on everything.  Most of the time, it's not a big deal.  Most of the time I can just ignore it, but just like generic cellophane sometimes it's impossible to find the beginning and the end.  It's not always clear as to why it's even there or what caused it to appear.  It's just always there and it's who I am.  

-Mandy 10/4/2020