Anxiety Isn't Real

Or so it's been said....

During my senior year of college, I had a space open in my schedule for an elective course. I decided to step outside of my comfort zone, and I signed up for Introduction to Creative Writing. To put into perspective just how outside of my comfort zone this was, I was a math major in college. I love numbers, and the thought of putting my ideas into creative writing pieces scared me.

Oh yeah, and I was going to have to read some of my pieces aloud while real live people were listening.

Fast forward to today, and it has been over a year and a half since I completed that course feeling a mixture of pride and relief. Nothing that I wrote was anywhere near professional or publishable, but I was able to learn a lot about creative writing and myself. There is one piece that I wrote that still sticks with me today that I titled "It's In My Head."

It’s In My Head

Anxiety isn’t real, or so it’s been said.

Yet I’m medicated and treated, why?

These are the thoughts that run through my head.

We all struggle with dismay and dread.

To say you’re unique would be a lie.

Anxiety isn’t real, or so it’s been said.

But these feelings are ones that I can’t shed,

so do I bottle them up until I die?

These are the thoughts that run through my head.

Everyone hates to be social, prefers their bed,

and overthinks each hello, each goodbye.

Anxiety isn’t real, or so it’s been said.

Am I alone in constantly being misread,

in ceasing to function with my mouth desert dry?

These are the thoughts that run through my head.

Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Shut up instead.

You know there’s no reason for an outcry.

Anxiety isn’t real, or so it’s been said.

These are the thoughts that run through my head.

This poem came from our assignment to write a villanelle, which is a very structured poem with a rhyme scheme and repeating lines. I immediately decided to write about my anxiety for this piece. I was trying to fit something that causes a severe lack of structure, my anxiety, into a form with excessive structure, a villanelle.

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, and it just feels right to share this poem tonight. Maybe, just maybe, someone will relate to my desire for wanting to fit my mental illness and all of it's symptoms into some kind of comprehensible structure.