I think the best way that I can describe anxiety is that it’s always there in the back of your mind, in the pit of your stomach, in the lump in your throat, even when you’re smiling or laughing or dancing or running.
It isn’t bigger than everything else you’re doing but it feels like it. It’s like a parasite, this small thing that has the ability to completely take over your body whenever it feels like it.
It doesn’t matter what mood you are, all you can ever feel is “anxious,” which might be mixed with other emotions but really, when you feel it, nothing else can matter. It forces it’s way to the front line and pushes everything else aside.
It changes the way you see things like the sun and the flowers and the buildings and it changes the way you hear things like your favourite song and the sound of the subway arriving and the wail of a siren. The sun is too bright and the flowers remind you that things around you are growing but you are not, and the buildings just confirm that everything in this world is so much bigger than you and your small problems, and your favourite song just makes you cry and the subway makes you miss home and the sirens make you long to be back home where you could hear crickets and rain and silence.
Anxiety makes everything bigger and more complex than it was ever meant to be, but all you can do is live with it and stay away from busy intersections and isolated alleys and roof edges and try not to cry in public and just hold it together.
What else can you do?