A year ago, I was prone to anxiety.Internalizing a battle that my family had spent years invalidating.I learned how to shove myself into empty spaces. borrowed spaces.hopefully-no-one-notices-me spaces.Paralyzed by excruciating feelings of fear but no one wanted to acknowledge that because it's always "just been in my head."A year ago, I was in a constant battle of tearing myself apart just to fill up my journals.Writing to take the pain away but ironically, the pain inspired the writing.Almost like the only time I felt I had a purpose was when my pages were bleeding red ink.I do not understand why I preferred to live in the shadows.I cannot tell you why some days tasted like springtime and others like dead trees during the winter.There's no explanation as to why the floorboards creaked (or groaned) every time I tried to leave -but I'm pretty sure it's because everything inside of it has always been temporary and it only wanted someone to stay and treat it like a home.I was always caught in the in between. Today, I find solace in those ink stained pages.Thoughts and emotions that I've now learned to properly cope with.Creating a world where I don't have to deal with anxiety and depression - a world where I can breathe on my own.There's hope in words and I'm glad I've allowed syllables to save my life -to reinvent a passion for spoken word I had lost long ago when I started to choke on my own words.and I find hope in people.I'm starting to realize that there are more to individuals than the facade that they let me see.They have hopes, and dreams, and fears, and insecurities, just like me. but that's what makes it beautiful.Along the way, i've been learning a lot about me, too. I've learned how to draw the line between who I am and who my mental illness is.I am learning that I am not a puppet on a string.I will not be dictated by the feeling that there's nothing out there for me.I want to be as authentic and transparent as I possibly can be.My purpose has started to unravel now that I've convinced myself that I'm worthy enough to have one.