Anxiety

When I was little I had a dragon

He didn’t have a name

Or maybe he did and I can’t remember

Because I would rather forget

He was always there

Keeping me company late at night

Or in a busy mall

Or with my family

And I hated him

“Why won't you leave me alone?”

I would cry

He never would respond

I sought to conquer my dragon

But I was too young to know how to do it by myself

My mother gave me a book one day

She said it was time that we defeat this dragon together

But by then I had grown too old

The dragon was now entangled with me

I had grown and with him

He was knotted around me like a weed

Slowly growing bigger

I didn’t know a life without the dragon

My mother gave me a pen one day

We wrote together

I wrote the stories of my dragon

Ones where he made everything in my world feel strange and scary

Together, my mother and I rewrote the stories

I had my toolkit

We wrote everyday

And one day the dragon was written out of the story

When I was little I had a story

One without a dragon in it

One that I made myself