anxiety – The Abysmal Witch

I am raw.
My edges bruise at the faintest touch
Like a peach balanced at the edge of over ripe
Each difficulty
Each push back
Each slight murmur of error
And I am burnt with shame
Enfolded in fear
Lost in doubt
With just a soupçon of rage underlying it all

I seek bold
Fearless
UNSTOPPABLE (I’m looking at you t-rex)

These states run from me
Faster than I can chase
Or even see
And I am touched
By disquiet, disturbance, distrust
Failure looms not (not truly, not in this moment)
Yet is is my sword of Damocles
I am cursed by its weight
“I’m not touching you”
It says like an eight year old in the throes of being eight
And as unignorable
I can think of nothing else
I consider tossing away my Work
Easier to do that than live with fear
Easier to do nothing than be bound
By anxiety never-ending

I am a delicate flower
Without the luxury of living safe

I am a delicate flower and I am afraid.

I don’t know.

I don’t know how to feel. How to bring my emotions up to the level of my awareness and breathe them out.

I don’t know what I feel. Am I anxious? Stressed? Hurt? Angry? There is a mishmash of emotions and all of them edged but not as much as in the recent past. There are things gnawing at me, mild distress over choices made that apparently went wrong, feeling judged, feeling wrong.

I don’t know if I’m wrong or right. Where do my actions sit on the appropriate line? Does it even matter? Probably not. It isn’t a global catastrophe or even a localized one. Just a sense of unsettled and unright. Which is not the same as wrong.

I don’t know if there’s anything more to do. Should I do more? Should I care? Should I do less?

Should I walk away?

How do I put down the little worries? How do I put down the second guessing? How do I walk away from the endless considerations of possibilities?

I don’t know.

And that, Dear Self, is living.