Cat on the Rails--Anxiety
Anxiety and I are old friends.
By that I mean that I've lived with it for so long, that we go so far back that it's one of the things I've come to identify as it's own...thing.
At any given time I can feel it creep up on me. When I'm too tired, when things don't go the way I expect them to, when I feel excluded or somehow on the 'outside' of any given situation.
Anxiety has this unique way of taking your voice and making it's own. It takes the wheel and twists perfectly normal things into these seemingly insurmountable mountains. It suffocates the calm and takes a hold of your throat with a strangling, icy grip.
I am a cat and it is the tub ledge upon which I stand. I see the water, I drink water, I know water isn't going to hurt me. But Anxiety says it will. Anxiety says that I will drown. That I will thrash around unproductively. That I will make a fool of myself for even trying.
Anxiety binds me in ways you'll never see. It was the driving force behind many missed opportunities, why I struggle to get up in the morning. Anxiety steals my breath, increases my heart rate...and yet it's nothing.
The fact is, even when you're the cat on the ledge, you get tired of standing in the corner. You get tired of cowering and panicking and fearing things that will not, should not, MIGHT NOT EVER HAPPEN.
I am guarded, untrusting, clingy, and forever questioning myself because of this.
Anxiety splits you into two. It takes who you are, your most confident, resourced, brave, normal feeling self and separates that from the rest of your senses. It wedges itself in and settles the way an old friend finds their way to your fridge, or your couch, and it really gets to the point where you don't even notice.
HOWEVER. I am not anxiety.
I am not the fear that binds me when I don't keep it in check. I am a person with dreams, and a life. I am a child of the Almighty God and with the right amount of help and self care I conquer my fear more days than it conquers me.
I am strong because I fight a war everyday and I have for most of my life. I struggle for victory in the smallest of ways until suddenly those victories become hold hat. They become a learned nature. They become habit.
Then it's on to the next.
I am on to bigger and brighter things.
I don't think I'll ever be rid of my anxiety. But with the tool box I have slowly collected via trial and error...I will live an extraordinary life in which I will scale the mountain until they are cracks in a sidewalk. I will search and strive and overcome because it's who I am.
I may not look like it by any means, but if you could see...if you could just see the battle field, the scars that I thought I would never be rid of HEALING all on their own. Fading from existence to the point that I am baffled that they were ever issues in the first place. If you could walk a mile in my shoes, then you would see that anything I've done to overcome what I have?
You'd see that you can too.
That you are one step from whole.
That you can be the cat the learned to swim.
It's amazing what we, as people, are capable of doing. Broken or otherwise.
Afterall, it's the works of art with the noticeable flaws that tell the best stories...right?
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