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.

Anxiety is getting quieter, but it's not gone. I feel it in my periphery, knocking and scratching. My walls are a little stronger today, and a little stronger everyday. But there's always that unwelcome guest tapping on my door. I hear it whispering through the boards, little lies I don't quite believe but I can't quite ignore. Each day is a fight.

Depression is a little louder today. Not quite loud enough to leak but it falls like rain on my roof. My roof is a little stronger today, and a little stronger everyday. But the rain still falls heavy and cold. When I find a leak, I patch it. Trusting the patches hold longer than I do. The rain makes me feel heavy and cold. Each day is a fight.

Anxiety - tells me that it's all my fault. It fills my chest and stomach with a sick, sweet bile that I'm unable to *****. It tells me I'm sick, but never sick enough. That I deserve to be miserable because I am a liar and a sinner and a *****.

Anxiety - looks like being late for work everyday. Being constantly distracted, overworked, underperforming.  Anxiety is quiet in the room but loud in my ears. I'm frozen in sickness but I cannot stop moving.

Waking up is like drowning in cold water. The first five minutes my eyes are open, I'm operating under nothing but the instinct to survive.
But surviving makes me late for work.
No one speaks of it but I hear their voices in my head. In my heart.
The coffee keeps me moving, keeps me b sweating, keeps me from thinking of the corroding feeling in my chest for seconds at a time. I ate a lonely breakfast too quickly so I could swallow my medicine alone.
Now it's lunch time and I'm not hungry. But I eat anyway, hoping to taste a little happiness.
I don't know what better is going to feel like so I don't know if it's coming.
Maybe better is how I feel right now.
I want to cry but every time I try, I can't.
My thoughts are all I can think about.
I'm a robot, a shell -
Going through the motions of life without feeling it.
I've become a replica of myself without consciousness.
All I do is eat and work. Sometimes they feel like the same thing.
I'm late from lunch now. I want to care.
I feel a mechanism ache in my chest - the one that's meant to care, but I don't.
I think about what to tell my therapist tonight, and I remember drowning when I woke up.
Cold, throat full of water, curled up in a dry bed.
I blame myself for being sick.
I want to cry, but I can't.
My whole body is restless, sore.
I jitter yet I feel static.
Am I even here?
If I left, would it even matter?
I keep having dreams that no one can see or hear me.
I don't know if I'm dreaming anymore.

Anxiety is - picturing gore.

Anxiety is - a searing pain in your left thigh that only appears when you're at work.

Anxiety is - feeling like you're forgetting something . . . constantly. And feeling like you're behind on everything, even when all of your work is done.