I really do normally aim for funny in all of my literary ventures (lengthy Instagram posts), but sometimes Funny just isn't hanging out with me.  Like today.  Something I'll bring up often on this blog is that I live with anxiety.  Generally, it's not something I'm suffering from, it's rather more like another part of me.  A third party inside of me - so there's me (the brains of the outfit), my spirit (my connection with God), and anxiety me.  Anxiety is a vital part of what makes me so wonderfully mediocre, because when she's going to town with fret - I get absolutely nothing done.
We've been together for as long as I can remember.  Anxiety me has always hovered just below my normal, but around 7 years ago, she became my forerunner.  My soul and I can't make many decisions without elbowing Anxiety to see what her thoughts might be on the matter.  I'd definitely say that it's a crutch now.  But, a crutch is way better than what she has been for me, before I really dug deep and got to know her.  I confronted my anxiety head on by using anti-anxiety medication, and a complete mental breakdown about 6 years ago.  There really is no learning experience quite like getting bashed down to your lowest point.  You have to recover, you have to learn, you have to adapt, when something like that happens.  So now we're buds, and I can look my anxiety in the eye, and really SEE her.  I normally can tell her to sit down and shut the hell up, even.  Pat her on the head, acknowledge her concerns, and then turn away from her.  Golly sometimes though, sometimes...  I just can't fight her.  It usually happens when I'm tired or my brain has too many thought paths it's trying to travel.  She takes on another form, a feral one that climbs up onto my shoulders and peers over every thought I have.  One that weighs me down with the pressure of "Not Ever Knowing For Sure".  I stumble through those days feeling like I'm at an endless Crossfit WOD, and that shit gets tiring.  Physically, mentally, emotionally - tiring.  I feel so weary by the time I lay down in my bed, but Anxiety is still there, chewing on me now.  Each little bite she takes from me is her way of introducing everything Brain hasn't already thought of.  She's relentless on these dark days.  Biting and bringing up any facet of my life that I haven't scanned for issues yet, hungrily feeding on my imagination.  I have several ways now that I handle this wild and unruly part of myself, one of them is meditation (and prayer during meditation).  I have been successful at mentally balancing myself for the better part of 5 years now, and I'll proudly say that that's even while suffering through a late-term miscarriage (stillborn, in my heart - I delivered a stillborn baby).  It's an endless dance of acknowledging, processing, and quieting.  Today though, is one of those days that nothing is working.  Not my usual stare-down with Anxiety, not my conversations with my sister and husband, not my meditation.  The focus of my anxiety, even though Brain knows it's irrelevant and just what Anxiety has chosen to honor with her dedication today, is my 2 year old son.  He has woken up a couple of times tonight, and I held him sleeping in my lap while I checked him over.  He really wanted to be asleep, yet there I sat, holding him and listening to him breathe, and wondering why his leg was twitching once, twice.  The days that Anxiety bleeds out of me and smears her influence over my children and husband are the darkest.  Those days, I can't hold her back, even though I'm fully aware that she is poisoning them, too.  That's the part that makes my heart hurt the most.  I know how the rest of tonight will go, and it won't involve any sleep.  Maybe a couple of hours, around 5am.  With luck, Anxiety will draw herself back down by morning and settle in to my chest, where she lives in a sharp pressure I constantly feel.  Better there than crouching on my shoulders, though.  At least with her in my chest, I can move relatively fluently through life.