Anxiety

Full disclosure: I have anxiety. Heart stopping, sleep stealing, asthma inducing anxiety. It has been a significant roadblock for me since I can remember. I remember my first anxiety attack better than I remember my first kiss and that in itself is saying something. My anxiety has shaped so much of who I have become as a young adult. It drove me to get deeply immersed in my honors and AP classes in high school and to become obsessed to the point of panic about color coordinating my closet. I am fortunate enough to have had the support over the years that has allowed me to harness my anxiety and use it to create some incredible things but that doesn't mean that I have gone from panic attacks to perfect by any means. I'm lying in bed right now next to my wonderful, confident, self-assured boyfriend who is snoring peacefully while my mind races at a breakneck pace. The nonstop flurry of doubts and incomplete decisions are causing my heart to race and my stomach to churn. I feel scared and sad and mad all at once. I don't have much intention of posting this entry at this point but I do feel both proud and grounded by the idea that amidst my internal turmoil, I am turning not to my usual crutch of lists but to the more relieving and rewarding prospect of real writing. Mind you, my iPhone formatting makes it nearly impossible to edit my text and I fear that tomorrow I will wake up to find one maddeningly long and illegible fragment but right now, at this moment, the flurry of fingers across a touch screen keyboard is helping. It's drawing the focus off of my doubts about planning the perfect wedding, the adoption of what I had believed would be my dream puppy (I'm currently reconsidering) and the fear of my increasingly rage flu loneliness and pushing me instead towards the faint possibility that maybe, just maybe, I will find a way to fulfill my childhood dream of being a real live (or real web) writer.