If someone ever asked me what anxiety feels like, I summed it up perfectly to someone just now: imagine being thrown in the deep end of a pool unaware. For a moment, you’re trying to gather your surroundings and assess how you are going to get to the surface so you can breathe. And as you’re swimming towards the surface, to get to air, someone pushes your head back down underwater. For a moment, you had the briefest encounter of filling your lungs up with oxygen only to have it stolen from you as you are pushed below, beneath the depths of the water. So, you try and find a way back up, but this time you move slightly over so you can avoid what was pushing you back down. And you’re just there beneath the surface once more, about to reach what you were just climbing towards seconds prior, only to be pushed down again by something heavier this time. And this keeps happening over and over and over again.

You keep adjusting your position, because you know eventually you will reach the surface and catch a break. But you never catch a break. Eventually, you learn to breathe with less air. That the one gasp of breath you get is enough to move forward, push on, gain strength for whatever is keeping you down. But it never feels like enough. Every once in awhile you are afforded the treat of more than a second of fresh air into your lungs. It is always a glimpse though. A mere moment of bliss. But then you are pushed back down further and further.

How long can one survive just holding on to that little breath? That small amount of freedom. When will you ever be good enough? Smart enough? Pretty enough? When will you ever be loved enough? Or worthy of being loved enough. When will it be enough to just exist? Or enough that everything and everyone around you isn’t sucking the life out of you breath by breath, moment by moment. That you are just enough. No expectations. THAT is anxiety.

Anonymous