I Prepare for Disaster Before Breakfast

Dear Delyara, Anxiety makes me tired before the day has even asked anything of me. I wake up and my body is already slightly ahead of itself. My jaw is tight. My heart feels like it started the morning before I did. I check my phone with one eye closed, as if bad news might be waiting there, even on completely ordinary days. That’s what people don’t understand about anxiety. It does not always need a reason. Sometimes it arrives before the story does. And then the whole day is shaped around it. How much I can handle. How long I can stay somewhere. Whether I can make a phone call without rehearsing it. Whether a neutral message will turn into an all-day emotional investigation. I know I don’t look unwell. That’s part of the problem. I look normal while carrying a private weather system.