Fight, Flight or Freeze: The Anxiety Wormhole

"I've got anxiety worming its way through my body..."

...is what I did not say to my therapist, as I struggled to express how overwhelmed I felt. I did not tell her how I kept opting to work from home because I would wake up with severe nausea that had no physical cause. How trying to get out of bed would cause dizziness. How thinking about anything made me want to throw up.

Photo by Sharosh Rajasekher on Unsplash

"Make a list of the things that trigger your anxiety..."

...is what my therapist did say to me. "Divide the list into things you can do something about, and the things you cannot do anything about. Then break the first thing you can do something about into smaller steps, and write them down."

And I did, and it works for a few hours at a time, but now it is way past midnight and I'm frantically switching between tabs, looking for anything that will rescue me from the screaming soul inside my brain.

"I've got anxiety worming its way through my body..."

...is what I did not say, is this lived reality, is time stretching from now until forever. It is the endless search for music that will calm my soul, music that does not evoke memories magnified into horror by the fear, music that does not accelerate my heart's beating into frenetic drumming that echoes inside my soul. Music that soothes, music that comforts, music is memory, and are there no memories that do not make me want to spontaneously combust?

My cats walk across the room and I worry, I worry that they will leave me, that they will sicken, that they will die. I worry they are not eating, I worry they're losing weight, I worry I will fail them the way I failed Fury, poor Fury.

My cat, she nuzzles my bag and flinches at the slightest movement, and I worry, I worry that she will never grow to trust anything. She's happiest where she is, among other cats, and I cannot, I cannot dream of sending her away.

My cat, he stalks, he stretches, he peers under the bed at the flinchy cat, and I worry, I worry I will never be enough for his big heart, his endless need for love.

My cats, they fly across the house and crash into everything, they pick fights with each other and get slapped by their mother, they cry if they don't see her, they curl up next to me when they think I'm not watching. And I worry, I worry that they'll never get over losing their mum, I worry she'll search for them forever, and I turn to snarl at anyone who dares try to take them away from me.

I see writers, stumbling writers, good writers, proficient writers, and I worry that I've written the same chapters a million times. I worry that I never make it past the middle, I worry that the end seems to never stop writing itself.

And everywhere I see mistakes dancing large, mocking mistakes looming as the anxiety worms its way through my body. I see love and feel only fear, fear of hurt, fear of change, fear of the future, fear that I will turn into that which I most fear.

I see last year just as the anxiety reaches my brain and the blessed blackness closes in. I see last year and silence falls, the songs no longer matter, my heart stops beating because all that matters is that I protect myself from last year... and the ten years that came before it.