My Mind is a Masterpiece
a self portrait by Ariel Mitchell
It sits on my chest at night. It sits within my stomach during the day. It’s an evolving shapeshifting parasite that doesn’t seem to ever truly leave permanently.
My dad doesn’t understand it. He’s always known there was something wrong – maybe he can hear the creaking of gears grinding in between my ears at 4am – but he doesn’t have much else to say besides “stay positive” or “stop stressing”.
They’ll always tell you to “just stop stressing!” But the term “stressing” is no word to describe the overwhelming tidal wave of thoughts that I drown in every day. Telling me to just stop is like telling the water to stop filling my lungs. It isn’t just a stressful day or a “rough patch”, it is more like a constant throbbing of overthinking everything you can possibly think of that doesn’t end. It is screaming at a brick wall, telling it to stop being red and of course it isn’t listening just as I cannot stop this tornado of thoughts from tearing apart houses, towns, fields, and life within me.
I have found that it is trying to postpone a writing assignment just because of the fear you won’t be good enough. The fear of presenting. The fear of judgement.
It is wincing at every single flash of headlights through your window when you drive at night, because you can’t stop the brutal images of instant impact and shattered glass from flooding your mind.
It is feeling like you want to die, but you don’t want to stop living. You don’t want to rid yourself of life, you just want this feeling to go away.
It is the feeling of dread when a random word in a sentence sticks into your brain, and you find yourself flailing through a black hole, thrashing limbs through darkness, not knowing when it will bring you back to earth, getting lost within your own head, like a twisted Alice in a horrifying wonderland.
It is cancelling on your friends extravagant evening adventures because something inside of you suddenly stirred up a state of panic.
It is being scared of everything and nothing all at once.
It is not wanting to give in to love because they will tell you to “just be careful”. Which doesn’t seem like much, but it implies that there is an end to it all, maybe tomorrow or maybe in three years but it is still an end. It is knowing that they expect you to destroy it. They wouldn’t dare tell you to your face, but you know that it has been implied, which means your mind starts to have a mind of its own, pulling you by the hair and tearing you through endless possibilities of loss, dreadful beginnings and undesired endings, thoughts of dying and thoughts of losing everything you hold dear.
Anxiety has had its chilling grip on my life for as long as I can remember. It has been a wavelength battle of the highest highs and some of the deepest depths of lows. It has taken me years to acknowledge that the creaking gears within my head are so much more than loss and despair.
I have learned that I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and that I am lucky to feel anything at all.
My anxiety does not own me.
You cannot tell me that it’s nothing because it is something, and that something can be terrifying yet beautiful all the same.
My mind is a masterpiece. Whether it terrifies you or not, I am a beautifully chaotic trainwreck. A wreck of thoughts and fears and feelings that do not control me.
My mind is a masterpiece.