Anxiety - Jordon Thatch

Anxiety (Found poem)

By: Jordan Thatch

This is what it feels like to have your heart racing and not knowing when or if it would slow down.

Your ever so tired body can’t keep up with it’s rapid beating against your chest,

You’re exhausted after only climbing a flight of stairs.

Just the thought of tomorrow leaves you gasping for air,

Only it’s not refreshing like the first breath you take when you come out the womb,

No, this breath is tight and sharp as if you’ve got asthma and just ran a mile without your inhaler.

As if your lungs are collapsing in their cage.
Like two popped balloons hanging in your chest.

This is feeling like your socks are filled with stones

And the world is zipping past you on roller skates.

This is being a week ahead on your calendar,

Never learning how to live in the moment

And letting life pass you by, while you’re still shaking worried about what tomorrow will bring

This is storing your past in the corner of your closet,

Hoping the clutter won’t take up the space for your self-confidence, and all your hopes and

dreams, But every now and then it likes to creep out of nowhere. To creep out to remind you it’s still there.

This is remembering the time you fell off your bike in 4th grade, or when you were first hit by the first man who was supposed to love you

You can put events from your life together through flashbacks

The worst ones will come unexpectedly.

A flood of past memories - Ones you choose not to remember, A flood of old emotions,

Still so vivid and alive, as if the past was running to catch you again.

Rushing over you like a monstrous Tsunami in the Honshu Ocean, One that sends you off your feet and spits you back out, Salty and heaving for air. This is living in a dream state, one you wish you’d waked up from so you can finally feel the ground beneath your feet .

This, Is instability of the body heart, and mind. This is learning to walk again, reminding yourself of every single step so you don’t send yourself falling.

This is questioning yourself constantly, wondering if everything is and will be okay

Wondering if everything you’ve worked so hard for and put your heart into is worth it because,

after all, your mind has been impaired, not just by the many many sleepless nights in fear of dying, or losing yourself, or waking up with everything gone. This is operating on fumes, Chocolate and junk food is the only thing keeping you going, Drugs are the only way you can

truly release your pain without sounding depressed or insane because, everyone else is doing it

too. They don’t notice you disintegrating into flesh and bone, that you’re merely hanging on for everyone else’s sake. Losing your focus and strength to your clouded head and burning heart.

This is worrying so much about what hasn’t even happened yet, that you don’t even have the

consciousness to take a look at what’s going on around you, to see the nothingness you’re slowly turning into.

This is trembling hands

This is stuttered words

This is feeling that dark pit in your chest no matter what you do

This is the inability to unclench your tense fists

This is independance

This is holding yourself at gunpoint

And not knowing which side to surrender

This is being the enemy

And the survivor

This is telling yourself “it’s gonna be okay” trying to calm your rigid body

While sitting in a ball sobbing not believing it ever will be

You don’t know if it’s ever gonna be okay.

You’ve lost control of yourself

Before you even had the chance to try and grab the wheel.

You’ve become so attached to what is to come, the thought of what captured you

May never cross your mind. Maybe one day you’ll learn that there is no use in trying to run from the beast.

For it will shadow your every move and maybe you’ll learn that stabbing it would do you no good. It would be a mistake, A big huge mistake.

‘Cause in the end, you’ll find yourself with bloody hands and a dying heart.