And this I title simply: Anxiety

Daily Prompt: A Source of Anxiety. Write about a noise — or even a silence — that won’t go away. 

It is a dull ache. Or maybe a quiet roar.

Everpresent.

My heart lurches along, my breath, unchecked, shallow and quick.

If I stop for a moment and breathe, properly, in for four counts, out for six, it subsides. Slightly. Momentarily.

The fluttering remains, though. Fluttering around my heart and stomach.

And eventually I think of other things, my breathing returns to my normal and the anxiety builds again.

What is going through my mind at these times?

Nothing. Everything.

There is no one thing that I am stressed about. There is actually nothing that I am stressed about right now.

And yet, I have a list of unformed things-I-must-do running like a roll of ticker tape, slightly blurry, not quite legible, through my mind. Propelling me forwards. Sending me out to do things, so that I can feel I have one less thing to do.

This feeling wakes me up in the night, and keeps me awake. This unnamed, illformed worry.

It invades my dreams, sucks my energy, gets in the way of The Moment.

It interrupts my family and friends, demanding to be heard.

But now I sit alone, no one to interrupt, To Do list made out, and I hear nothing worthwhile. No clear points from my anxiety. It makes a poor debater.

And yet, unconvincing though it may be, my heart continues to race, constricted, as my mind seeks to justify whatever mayhem it is causing, seeks to find something worrying to hold on to.

I know it is ridiculous, I know there is nothing, I know life is good.

And yet…

 

Do we all suffer in some way from anxiety?

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