Hey, you!
Yeah, you — I’m talking to you. You’ve interfered with my life for long enough. It’s time for you to sit down and listen to what I have to say:
Anxiety, you have got to go. You have overstayed your welcome, that is, as if you were ever welcomed in the first place. You’ve held me down. You’ve got too involved. You’ve hurt my relationships and friendships time and time again, and you are now getting too involved with my relationship with my son. You have got to go.
Years ago, when we first met, I was around 15 and I thought you were a product of my teenage hormones. Together with your good friend depression, you’ve toppled right over me and led me on this ridiculous roller coaster of emotions and mental illness for the past 20-plus years. You started out slow and then totally took over. You’ve grabbed the steering wheel to my life and I want it back for good.
Sure, you come and go, but the problem for me is how you always come back. I do not want you to come back. You make me feel physically ill. You choke me. You suffocate me. You overthrow me. I sometimes feel weak against your strength to have that much control over my mind. When you get help from your buddy depression and you both hit me at once, I feel like I’m drowning, like I’m done for.
You make me feel like a failure, like I’ll never amount to anything. I started writing to help me deal, but then you come along and make me worry about how much I am writing. You heighten when I haven’t submitted a piece, or when a piece I wrote has been rejected. You make me doubt myself and my abilities. You increase your hold on me when I have to go to work that day and don’t have time to write. How is that fair? I literally cannot write from work.
You quicken my heartbeat, and not in a good way. I’m convinced you are the reason for my stomach pains. I’m worried about developing an ulcer because of you. I take a pill every morning now, again because of you. Do you not care?
Obviously not. Now that you’ve become over-involved in my life with my child, I am starting to get a bit angry. I worry about what behaviors I’m displaying, which you are responsible for might I add. I worry about how you and good ol’ depression will affect my relationship with my son. He sees me crying. He feeds off my aura. He has started noticing when mommy isn’t feeling good and I don’t like it. I get impatient with him quickly in order to calm you, but it only ever makes things worse.
So please, anxiety — and by association depression — get out of my mind. Get out of my life. Leave me alone.
Sincerely,
Karen
Post originally appeared on The Mighty
To read my second Letter to My Anxiety, visit: A Second Letter to My Anxiety
