I spend too much energy on possible versions of pain

Dear Delyara, The real event is rarely the only event. There’s the imagined version before it. The worst-case version beside it. The version where I say the wrong thing. The version where they pull away. The version where something goes badly and I should have seen it earlier. The version where I’m caught unprepared and feel foolish for not anticipating it. By the time reality arrives, I am already tired from surviving its shadows. That’s what anxiety steals in me: energy spent on lives I never had to live.