Dear Anxiety,
I don’t know if you deserve a letter, as it would be more time I spent focusing on you. I don’t know if you deserve any more of my time of day, but I want to tell you how you make me feel. I want you to know what you have done.
Anxiety, there is nothing poetically beautiful about you. From how you keep me awake at night, to the way you can debilitate me during the day. Lying awake at night when the rest of the world is sleeping is frustrating. You exhaust me, but yet you are the reason I cannot sleep. You are the reason I lose my appetite, feel sick to my stomach and become nauseous. You are the reason my heart beats so fast it could jump out of my chest. The reason I have so much energy at times but I cannot focus on the task at hand.
I hate the way you make me insecure about everything. I hate the way you make me question every aspect of my life: every relationship, ability and dream I have. You are a burden, not only to me, but to the people in my life I love the most. I put unnecessary stress on relationships because I am insecure, because of you. It is stressful to my loved ones that I am uncomfortable, the ones that really understand. Anxiety, you are the reason I obsess about things and ask the same question one hundred different times in one day, driving people crazy. I constantly need to know if things are okay. I question close relationships in my life because you make me wonder. You make me think I have done everything wrong when I know from the bottom of my heart I am a good person and I bend over backwards for the people I care about.
I am smart enough to understand that you make me irrational. I know that there is no good reason for me to react to things like you make me. There are days when you control me, and I know that it is not my fault I can’t “just relax.” Anxiety, I am smarter than you make me feel.
Anxiety, I also am better than you. 95 percent of the time I can manage you without a doubt. I know to fuel my body with healthy food because you steal those nutrients away from me. I know to go to the gym and work my butt off so I can relieve stress. Managing you takes time and patience, and I have gotten very good at it. In spite of you, I maintain very positive and healthy relationships that you could never take away from me. You can try to defeat my plans, hopes and dreams, and there are days when you win. But, you will not win every day. Today, you do not win. Despite you, I am chasing my dreams, attending college and becoming someone I never knew I could be.
Anxiety, because of you, I have taken a proactive approach to improve my mental and physical health, but I refuse to thank you for that. It was me who did it. Not you. You are a part of me, but you do not define me. Your worst has brought out my best. Nobody can hear you except me, which is both wonderful and terrifying. There are days when I wish I could explain to people what you sound like to me, but that would mean more people could hear you. You are only a voice inside my head and compared to the beautiful voices in my life that are real, you are nothing. You might live within me, but you do not control me. For every day that I win, you lose, and that is enough to make me fight the next day.
XOXO, Kiss my butt.
