Anxiety is a master of tying knots. He ties my stomach up tight - so tight you can't undo it without fingernails. Or maybe scissors.
He ties up the muscles in my neck and shoulders. I feel like a puppet on a lead, tendons throbbing like guitar strings about to snap.
He ties my tongue, so I cannot speak. When I try, I make no sense. Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy and Anxiety assures me that I am.
With Anxiety comes Depression - the fat lady. She sits on me, hardly moving, only heavy. She laughs often and with each chuckle, she weighs heavier on my lungs.

It's then I realize that I am a circus. A freak show. Anxiety is my contortionist, but he uses my body instead of his own. He twists me into pretzels and tosses me to feet of a laughing audience. Depression is the fat lady and I am her stool.  And I am the ventriloquist doll, the dancing dog, the monkey with the cymbals, the lion getting whipped, the idiot getting pelted with popcorn. And the world is a laughing audience, unaware of pain, aware only of their own entertaining confusion.

And I feel sicker.