No one has anything nice to say about anxiety.
Its like having a weird, low-level fever at all times, making you slightly ill, but not always incapacitated – just sometimes. It invades your dreams and haunts your waking hours. Anxiety is a cage made up of shadow bars. Like depression, it whispers the sickest of lies in our minds, and wants to keep us in the same place — afraid. The National Institute of Health estimated that 31% of Americans struggled with an anxiety disorder – combining the numbers for generalized anxiety disorder, and seasonal affective disorder – and that has spiked since the pandemic. The world sometimes feels like it just piles on, and so many of us are afraid we won’t be able to cope.
And yet I see the people I love grimly pushing through, walking out into the world – never unafraid – but walking anyway. This is not a small thing.
So, thanks for that. For letting us see you… standing.
courage
know that
it’s the action
of touching the door:
before the chain or the lock,
standing.