Sometimes I’m fearless.

I say what I see and what I feel and what I know will get a rise out of people. I free fall in a wind tunnel 40 feet tall. I am suspended in the air with a rope thinner than my finger. My whole body is jolted upside down without a second thought.

Other times I’m a coward.

I sulk in my room with the blinds shut and my phone off, isolated except for the echo of the thoughts running through my head.

Everything I could do, I could be, line up single file in my brain like elementary school kids, and they are all wanting to me to choose them. They yell and fill my head with noise so loud it’s indistinguishable, so I close my eyes and shut everything else out.

I close my eyes, but I still feel the world underneath me moving faster and faster, I hear the clock ticking on and time passing me by. The voices of all the choices I have to make yell louder in order to be heard.

This is my anxiety.

“But you’re fine in front of crowds.”

“But I’ve never seen you have a panic attack.”

“But you’re so social.”

Anxiety: a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

I’ve heard of anxiety as in not-being-able-to-answer-the-phone anxiety and not-being-able-to-meet-people anxiety, but it’s usually not I’m-not-doing-enough anxiety.

I’m not anxious about making a phone call or ordering food or reading aloud. I’m anxious about my life as a whole. About falling short of the pressures I have put upon myself to become more than just another wasted opportunity.

People don’t see this as anxiety. They don’t see where my ambitions shape-shift into apprehensions. They don’t see the rope I’m climbing grow a head, turn into a snake and wrap around my neck. And they think restlessness will continue to overpower uneasiness.

And some days I’m okay, I can be all the things I want so badly to be. I feel invincible, but days like today keep me feeling like I will never break out of this social construct.

I stay hopeful for the time my longings will prove more lasting than my trepidations, and I know soon I will be everything I hope to be, but as of today, I stay fearful of what isn’t to come.