We as Humans

Anxiety.

At worst I feel like I'm clinging to the edge of a cliff.

At best I feel like everything around me has been shifted two inches left. Just slightly..... Off.

It's never really gone. Even when everything is okay and I'm smiling there's an underlying numb fear that I've grown dangerously accustomed to.

I don't want pity. In fact, I fear pity. I fear being recognized for my problems and insecurities. I fear people not believing when I say I'm okay, because I convince myself that I mean it, and I don't need to be told otherwise.

It tells me I need to be perfect, and anything that isn't must be obsessed over. I pick every scab from scraping interaction until my worry bleeds out. I'm infected with these thoughts that drag me to the worst outcome.

And I don't mean to say I'm absolutely miserable and that every smile is a lie. I don't have it worse off and sometimes I really do mean that I'm fine.

It's just that it's always there. Shoving every flaw in my face causing me to want to freeze over and just never risk failing.

For someone who doesn't experience it, you can never really understand how I can be both happy and on edge.

How, regardless of everything, the anxiety is never truly gone.

This was a thing I wrote that is not how I like it but has a concept I like.

Also my poem "September" and piece (?) Association that I mentioned in an earlier note are still coming. I haven't forgotten them.