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The Ramblings of GAD
I watch from the prison
my brain has made for itself as
flowers float easily
on the summer's breeze, drifting
into the media's waiting basket like an
old lover. Society adores
people like them,
has built the very garden
around their healthy stems,
these golden poppies and
romantic roses who all but crafted
the mold, whose brains
are prone to function correctly,
who don't stay up until 5 a.m. barfing
because they're so afraid of death,
of their lover falling out of
that sweet, safe love,
of death
of there could be a robber in the house right now and I wouldn't even know it
of oh my God I shouldn't have said that thing last week what an idiot
of I can still feel that boy's hands perverting me and he still knows where I live-
afraid of this mental illness continuing
to hollow out the person I was
and replacing it with a black emptiness
that people don't like and
that I don't know how to talk from.
And you should see peoples' faces
when I tell them I have GAD-
the eyerolls, because
"Everyone has anxiety".
The old-timers murmur something
between sips of coffee
about how they can't believe a thing like 'worry'
gets its own diagnosis nowadays.
And oh God,
you have no idea how I wish it was just 'worry',
how I used to pray that I could just
file away these demons in a drawer somewhere,
ridding myself of these awful ball-and-chain devils,
equal parts nature and nurture,
birthed from hell just to weave the strings of my life
into a cage.
You've no idea how badly I long to grab ahold of them
by their skin-hooked claws,
stretching out their black husks and tying them neatly
around my stem like a pretty ribbon,
making myself a perfect bouquet,
the picturesque girlfriend,
employee,
daughter,
fitting into these roles perfectly without the anxiety
making me sharper than I should be-
more jagged and afraid,
like broken pottery left teetering on a shelf,
more fear pheromones
than person
and most of all
so much harder
to love.
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