I Rehearsed the Conversation All Afternoon

Dear Delyara, I had one simple conversation to have today, and I lived it in my head at least twenty times before it actually happened. I rehearsed my wording while making tea. I rehearsed it while walking to the bathroom. I rehearsed it in the lift. I rehearsed it while pretending to listen to someone else speak. By the time the actual conversation happened, I was emotionally exhausted from all the versions that never took place. That’s one of the most invisible parts of anxiety for me — the amount of life that gets spent surviving events before they happen. People see one conversation. I experience twenty.