Walking the Tightrope in My Mind | Coping With Anxiety

Laying in bed long before my alarm is set to ring I follow the lines on the picture frame. It’s silent in my home and yet I find myself overstimulated. I can hear the tiny crinkle of my head sinking further into my pillow. I hear my lashes crunch against the fabric when I close and reopen them time and again pleading for sleep to carry me away from where my mind is about to go.

The Silence is too loud. It will send me right over the edge. I become distracted and anxious. Quite lost in this void of my brain, the walls start closing in. Crushed beneath the magnitude of pressure I place on myself. Immeasurable expectations no one person can bare. Skeletal fingers create the cage wrapped round my lungs, the oppressive dominance of the panic I long to control but can not grasp. Illusive as ever, appearing as a wraith in the shadows enshrouding me in its darkness only to vanish into nothingness unscathed by the suffering left in its wake.

So often I find myself here. The anxiety beckons to my demons, and my high-functioning depression provides them a feast. You cannot sleep there is far too much to do. If you lay here you know it will only get worse. You have words in your brain, if you don’t write them right now they will be lost. What does it matter if they are not worth reading? How did it feel dredging up the past? It wasn’t how you remembered it was it? We’re trying to protect you… The voices whisper to me from the inky blackness. And then I am begging for the Silence. 

It's a fine line, walking the tightrope inside my head. Leaning too far in any direction will cause the tumble that breaks me. It’s a fear I live with daily. That the monsters are waiting for me to slip. There are the ones with giddy, laughing faces that turn maniacal in the end. They crave the freedom to indulge their desires at the cost of all else. There are the ones with racing hearts and darting eyes full of tears. They shield their faces and hide from the reality that they too are being hunted. And there are the ones with lethargy in their bones, slow moving they crawl across the floor dragging their broken bodies behind them. But when they place their frail hands on the outside of my skull, when those frigid fingers plough through my hair forcing me to look them in the eye you see the endless torment mirrored in the cold, shiny reflection. I am forced to face them all. The eyes of the depression, of the anxiety, and the mania. And they all want their piece of me.