You shook my world and turned everything I knew to be comforting into foreign substances. You seized me by the hair and jolted me around, as if I was your rag doll. You removed me from the good in my life and dragged me into your torment until I became numb.
I numbed to the pain you subjected me to because I was too weak to fight it. I couldn’t bear to lift myself out of the hole in the Earth that you threw me into.

You enjoyed the torture you put me through. You liked how you could encompass my own body with nervous tremors and make me sob relentlessly. You were amused by my agony and only inflicted more trauma on my soul. You liked how my lungs forgot how to breathe and process oxygen when you were around me; you liked the feeling of suffocating me, my chest heaving between gasps of toxicity.

I was smothered in your putrid presence. Every time you crossed my mind, an eerie chill ran down my spine, lips curling in disgust, until I shook my head and continued on with my day. I accepted the pure air into my cells and relaxed my body, limb by limb. I didn’t want to let you into my nervous system this time; I would not be a host to such a parasite as you.

You lit me in flames and watched me burn into ashes with a smile drawn on your face. I withered down from being a strong skyscraper to a bleak brick that received no astonishment, no attention, and witnessed no joy.

I stared at one of the four walls of the bland box you stored me in, only taking me out when deemed fit for you; only bothering to recognize my humanity when you needed a cruel laugh. I was hypnotized by the cream paint on the wall and soon enough, my whole livelihood was drenched in that boring color.

You tugged at my weak edges, you pulled me apart, you scorned my pleas to make this torture stop. As I was burning, you didn’t realize that you had lit another flame inside of me. A spark had been ignited and I made a vow to myself to never let you win.

I would not lose this battle to you, anxiety. I would not, could not, let you control me any longer. I closed the curtains on whatever one sided puppet show you thought you had subjected me to. My petals bloomed again and the once dead leaves that clung to me had grown back into their vibrant green hue.

You thought you had me. You thought you knew me. You thought you would be victorious.

I was, and I am, stronger than you.