I'm convinced that having anxiety gives you radar
You can spot people with anxiety from a mile away
And when you see them
You just want to hug them
And tell them it'll be okay
and you wish someone would do that to you
but that takes a lot of energy and fighting with yourself and we're all terrified of rejection and vulnerability and ******* talking to people
The tell-tale signs become more obvious
The little ticks
Shaking legs
Tapping fingers
Grinding teeth
Rubbing hands together
Pulling at clothes
You know because you catch yourself doing them all the time
You'll know its a bad day when you can see the red mark over the scar tissue on my bottom lip
You can measure by how my nails look
Or how filled in my eyebrows are
because my fingers decide to declare war there when I'm not paying attention
I swear, when I'm stressed, I can never get the taste of blood off of my tongue
Like an iron key in my mouth
The entropy in my head is enough to drive a physicist mad
Panic attacks aren't always apparent
Sometimes it's just being overly quiet
And your lungs forget how to be lungs
and you just remember the lights
or the floor
or how everything blurs at the edges
Breathe.
I see shopping carts, soap dispensers, street lights, desks, your car window
I can touch the water, her hands, the table, the doorknob
I hear cars passing, people talking, the song you would sing to me
I smell oil and tires
I taste blood.