The Only Person I’m At War With Is Myself

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Life is hard. I get it. I’ve always understood that notion. We’re told from a young age that life is tough and it certainly doesn’t get easier the more we grow.

Nobody ever told me about how hard life could get when you’re stuck in a war with yourself. It’s friendly fire, my mind thinks it’s taking out the bad guys when really all it’s doing is self destructing. There’s a common term for friendly fire of the mind: Anxiety.

Living with anxiety is knowing how to swim with a hand pressed on your forehead, submerging you.

Please don’t think I’m not trying. Every day I try, I try until my mind has ran so many laps around the same track that my energy turns into exhaustion. Exhausted from running through the same motions.

They tell me well stop running around that track. Stop thinking, turn your brain off. I stare at them with tear filled eyes.

If I had any sort of a choice, I would have turned my brain off the first time I asked my mother if I was dying because my heart chose to skip a beat.

If I had a choice, I would have gotten on that subway car instead of compiling a list in my head why walking through a packed crowd seemed like the safest option.

If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have to fall asleep to the sound of a sitcom just to cover the noise my brain makes.

Choices. Life is made of choices. Right now the only choice I seem to have is to fight or flight.

I worry, it’s what I do. It’s how I’m wired.

And I’m trying, I’m trying to live. Because despite the worry, I know with confidence that this life can and will be what I make of it.