I think I can...
I think I can...
I know I CAN'T.

You may argue that I got the last line wrong. Scream and rave that it was all about "The Little Engine That Could." Climbing higher and higher up that hill with his wits and bravery - that he’ll always get to the top because he tried. But, that’s a children’s story. This here– this is an adult’s story– reality’s story.

The story of a hill that just keeps getting higher, no matter how far you climb. Altitudes rising and choking out oxygen, stealing your very last words, having you die restlessly with no Memoriam. A hill that grows tentacles just to asphyxiate your limbs and throw you back down to the mouth. A hill that isn’t even a hill at all– but a shadow, lurking at your side, waiting to drag you right along into the dark with it. Taking you kicking and screaming, tooth and nail – without even trying. A shadow that has a life all on its own, with the names to match: loneliness, misdirection, hopelessness – welcome to Mount Anxiety– the hike nobody ever wanted to take.

Anxiety is fear. Overwhelming fear. The kind of fear that could bring soldiers to their knees and the sunshine to rest; it is the world’s scariest monster and yet, people still doubt he exists. They exile him as nerves, laugh him off– and he loves it.

It gives him all the more reason to drag you out, pull your shoulders into your body and tears out of your eyes.

Anxiety is a ghost haunting your footsteps, making every step a misstep, and every redemption excruciatingly far. It is a possession that can grab hold of your body and never let go or lie dormant until he finds his perfect window. His time to finally creep out and shine– lights, camera, unwelcomed.

I just kept talking– from behind solid glass.

I wasn’t apart of the circle – I wasn’t anointed a friend. People just kept walking by. My voice became nothing, but a senseless noise in a crowd. My efforts just minuscule ticks on the wall.

I kept trying because that’s what troopers do right? But every single empty chair across from me began to spring leaks. Reaching out despite these discouragements, hoping to be met somewhere in the middle, to be understood... Nobody stuck.

A cycle that seemed unbreakable.

That was when I met the monster.

It came first as just a discomfort. Yeah, it was hard to be alone, but I would power through like I always did. Just fill that alone time with work.

Morphing slowly, I didn’t see it coming until it ran my whole body over. Crushing fingers– making them lose their motivation. Crushing dreams– giving them no further validation, and creating horror.

Reawakening my darkest nightmare. “What if I was destined to be alone forever?”

I had to be doing it wrong– all my friends that had moved away were already living with their best friends, had reasons to keep moving forward. But me, no matter how I kept reaching, people just kept slapping my hands away– bruising my fingers in ghastly hues of black and blue.

Crowded rooms became excruciatingly empty spaces. A constant reminder of that gaping hole deep in my chest; nobody wanted me at all. In the “real world,” I was useless. Just another waste of space, stealing oxygen from the valuable collective – I had been loved and now that it had slipped away, I would never have it again.

I didn’t even love myself.

I was doomed forever to live in unrequited limbo; to care so deeply about others, with no one so much as batting an eye in my direction. I was invisible, without even having the good graces of being unable to see myself in the mirror every morning. Petrified of yet another day of deafening silence and wasted breath.

No longer working, but worrying. Unable to even get up and face another meal alone, dragging myself through the day just to get through it– knowing that all my silver linings were lost. They no longer existed on this campus of gray.

I was going to be alone forever. No amount of relocating would fix my “broken” genes.

Stretching to avoid my own reflection at all costs– as it seemed to break glass.

While people around me worried about what to wear to the parties they were attending that weekend... I was worrying about what I could do to make it through. Searching for every method possible in order to distract me from the monster crawling under my skin. Creating my doubts. Plummeting me backward.

Suddenly, I was loosing all progress. All the work I had put into learning to love myself was falling through. Useless work. I could hardly face myself. My face was repulsing, my dreams were broken; there had to be a reason.

I had to be mediocre. I had to be horrendous. I had to be a failure. I was lost. There was no other explanation. The one thing I knew I wanted to do with the rest of my life was even slipping away. My joy slipped out of my eyes, the smiles became intimate games of charades, my soul was slowly dying. Excruciatingly. Fear had driven a wedge in my heart.

Caring so deeply had suddenly become my enemy– because, on this battlefield, I was the only one fighting to keep moving. The fear I would die alone in that massacre. The fear I would survive, but nothing left to fight for– not love, not friendship, not ambition– but to return to my lonely world. With no hand to hold or music soothing my wounds when the post trauma set in. Either way, the monster would win.

I think I can’t...
I think I can’t...
I know I CAN.

Fear had become my strong suit; my most prevalent “achievement.” The tentacles crawling up my neck and draping over my shoulders, it was suddenly suffocating.

Dragging not only around my body but also along the floor, like a shadow stretching out. It was not only a part of me but also an extension of me. It was like a personal rain cloud that stormed over my head– circling and circling until it took form.

You could go in and out... Sometimes it was just a light drizzle, so easy to ignore, so simple to walk through or it would be a monsoon pouring over everything, letting treacherous winds knock down every single hope and expectation of the day. It was like standing alone in the eye of the hurricane– where all was quiet, for just a moment, until it all opened up over the sky.

However, my friends that stood the test of time, who kept by my side through the bad and the ugly– were hardly fooled by the monster's charade.

My friends were the center of my world; they knew exactly what made it spin, what made it tick– so when the terrain drastically changed, they knew something wasn’t right. They knew there was something consuming me– whether the exacts were clear, I’m unsure, but they could see the symptoms before even I.

When you live with the monster, sometimes, the monster tricks you into thinking it has become your reflection in the mirror. It conflates. It starts to take on many masks; the monster becomes invisible behind your very visage. You just come to accept it. You nod it off, you assume– that’s just who I am now and unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do.

You convince yourself that sadness and fear are your new symphony; that there’s no way out to return to that whistle of a happy tune. You go so in and out– in the tumultuous reality that some days feel like you’re brand new, the person you always were and then on others, you’re the monster, the one hiding in your mind. It’s a reality caught somewhere in the middle, being pulled into directions you don’t always want to follow.

But, your friends, the ones that matter– they’ll know your past map; your past dreams, your past aspirations just enough to realize you’ve drifted from them.

I cannot thank them enough for starting that bridge– the bridge between my past and my future. My anxiety didn’t need to begin defining me and they made sure I saw that. They helped get me the help I needed.

Teaching me the fundamentals... That there was a very real ability to live with it, without making it a hindering force– to help push me forward.

I can never say this is where it ends.

Mental illness never has a concrete ending. My anxiety will always be a part of me, a part that I can’t necessarily erase. A part I’ll have to learn to accept. I can’t go back and say “I know I can” as confidentially as I desire, but I hope, with help, I’ll be able to get somewhere close.

My anxiety may still feel like a monster sometimes.

Anxiety doesn’t just disappear, hardly, but I have found a way to keep growing from it. I don’t have to burrow down by myself, I can grow without doing it alone.

There are still possibilities. The monster doesn’t have to roar, encompass me in its shadow.... Instead, it can shrink, fall away to a whisper. Still there, but never owning my identity.

I am who I am, and as I’ve come to learn, my anxiety is just a tiny piece of it.

A piece I’m learning to manage every single day with one powerful step at a time.