So, coming up here to speak was really giving me so much anxiety.  Presentations are hard you guys, i think everyone gets anxiety doing this. It was just a constant battle between “C’mon I can do this!” to “this sounds so stupid...”

Sorry…

But do you see how easy is that was?

To squeeze in this defective adjective
Like,
Mental Illnesses don’t tower over people
With their lethal mouths
Breathing flaming thoughts
As you run across an endless plateau
Escaping sharp teeth that sink themselves into you
Shredding your mind into thousands of pieces
Scattering,
until you have to come back and bind yourself back together with the hot glue of “its going to be alright” and “it’ll get better soon”

You place my condition into a blank space of an adjective,
but you can’t lock demons into steel cases

Anxiety is persistent
It feeds on
Constantly worried,
Stressed,
Paranoid,
Concerned,
Abandoned,
Bruised by every minor detail.

It’s the thoughts in my mind that just end up
Diving head first into an endless pit
Smooth-stoned walls
filled with what ifs,
what happeneds,
and Oh my god what did I just say

I feel like sometimes I have to come out to people about my anxiety.
But that’s hard,
Because what if I’m not sure?
What if I just think I have it?
What if I’m just pretending to have it?
What if all this worrying is just normal and everyone goes through it?
But they don’t..
THEY pretend that they do
THEY are the ones who don’t
THEY are the ones who made me feel like I possibly couldn’t
Because who knows the difference between their jokes
and these ropes of anxiety that continue to provoke
the thoughts in my mind
that I choose to leave unspoken

It’s claws strangle me,
tighten around my entire body,
suffocate me,
til the tears come pouring down my face,
and my lungs struggle to take in enough breath,
til my heart beats so fast
The blood seeps through the seams of my skin
and leaves me trembling in my seat.

I can not move.

Please someone just tell me that that’s enough validation
to put this label on me that says
“Fragile, contains anxiety..”

A mask was put over my eyes
By the hands of a society that was blind
To see what the true meaning of anxiety was
Panic attacks, depressive episodes,
All exploded from their mouths
Self-diagnosis, the only method
To figure out the dosage I needed
To control my brain.

We can no longer touch the words
Hear their voice from the depth of the pages
But here let me pull you out a dictionary,
Flip through to find you some better vocabulary
Because
my anxiety...
Oh
MY anxiety…is not your adjective.