I am tired before the day even begins

Dear Delyara, Some mornings I wake up with my heart already racing, as if something terrible has happened while I was asleep and my body knows before I do. I reach for my phone with that familiar dread, even when there is no reason for it. No bad message. No emergency. No visible problem. That’s the hardest part of anxiety for me. It does not always wait for a reason. It arrives first and then forces my mind to build a story around it. I still go to work. I still reply. I still do normal things. That’s why people don’t really see it. But they don’t see how much emotional work goes into appearing calm. They don’t see how many conversations I rehearse before speaking, how many texts I rewrite, how many harmless things feel dangerous for no clear reason. I’m exhausted by the amount of fear my life contains that nobody else can measure.