Hello Blogging world. I know that I haven’t posted in a while, I just haven’t had the space to. However, I felt like sharing tonight. I wrote this spoken word poem earlier this year about my anxiety because it was so strong and I was in a really dark place that the only way to have a semblance of peace was to write it out. So here in its entirety is my spoken word piece and I hope that even if you don’t struggle with anxiety you can get a glimpse of what those of us who do deal with. Even though since then I have learned more so how to live my life with it not against it, it is still sometimes a daily struggle to not let it win. I am so proud of how far I have come, even if it hasn’t been easy. I do hope that this poem helps those who struggle with anxiety know that they are not as alone as the anxiety makes you feel. You are not alone. We are in this together.
My Insanity
It’s this feeling of complete and utter fear, but no rational reason why you are even afraid. This fear, a shell of who I am, has helped me to created a mask, a disguise, helping me to not have to explain how I actually feel when people ask me how I am, but giving people a mirror instead of a book because a book would weigh them down, but a mirror is a smoke screen, shielding the ghosts that I face and giving them a smile and a quick ” I am good” to deflect the war raging inside. To them they see a mirror, perfect, not broken and nothing to fix.
Because that’s what I give choose to let them see. In reality there’s a book, no, not just small novel that you read when you want something light and easy so that you can relax the days troubles away, but an encyclopedia, no a dozen, no a thousand encyclopedias, explaining my fears, my doubts, my irrational thoughts and feelings, all of which is far too heavy and too pointless to share with others since they are too scared, nay, too afraid to even dive into the depths that is my anxiety. Anxiety.
Yes that’s what this madness is called. No, it’s too much for them to bear, so I must bear it myself, thus pushing me further and further into the abyss I call my sanity. Or rather my insanity. My insanity. That’s how it’s seen from the outside looking in. An irrational fear of something that may never happen. A state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension.
Why must you always worry they say, just don’t worry and relax, don’t dwell on it and the fear will pass. Take medication, mediate, and it will all go away. All the medication and the meditation will ever do is NUMB.
It takes away the fear, the insanity in which you live for a brief moment in time. What a relief you say. I can finally get some sleep without having this gripping fear keeping me up at odd hours of the night.
It tricks you into thinking you are cured and the battle is over, but anxiety is a mischievous demon and it haunts you and envelopes you over and over again until you can’t breathe, Until you feel as if you are stumbling through a thick fog, causing you to feel utterly and completely alone.
No medication can ever rid me of these ghosts waging a war inside of me, telling me the million, no, billion things to worry about today, tomorrow, the next day, the next month, the next two months, the next three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve months ahead. No, my anxiety says, don’t let people in, IT’S. NOT.WORTH. IT.
Why do you even try? Do you think for a second they will understand? To them, anxiety is just normal, It’s not a disorder that one can suffer from. Keep locked up and closed down for business. They will never understand you like I do. I am with you all the time, I know you better than you know yourself, it says.
But I want to scream back louder, I am aching to tell my anxiety, these ghosts challenging me to a duel that they can go straight back to the hell they came from, no matter what they say, and that I will fight back harder because I want to live. No, I need to live. I have worked to hard, for too long, just to give up now and let people see a mirror instead of the truth, because they deserve to see behind the mask, the fog, and the costume.
That’s what I desperately want to say, but I am well aware of how ugly the truth is. Only a rare person see’s the ugliness of someone’s truth and instead of running away see’s it and embraces it, knowing that is a part of who you are. You wonder why I have trust issues?
Trusting someone means letting go of the anxiety that they will see my ugliness and run away terrified. I know too few people that this applies to. When I say that out loud my anxiety tells me, “See? It’s only a small amount of people, I TOLD YOU SO!”. But I SAY, I am BLESSED. Blessed and grateful to have those people, no matter how few, who SUPPORT me, LOVE me, and HONOR the truth of my insanity.
The End.
Between A Rock and Vulnerable Place 