My Mind Makes Small Problems Feel Immediate and Total Before Reality Has Even Had a Chance

Dear Delyara, A child is quiet after school, and my mind runs ahead to everything terrible. A call comes from an unknown number, and my body reacts before I have even answered. A doctor says, “Let’s check,” and I am already living in an after that does not yet exist. I am tired of how quickly fear colonises possibility. The world can still be perfectly ordinary on the outside while I am privately living through versions of disaster that nobody around me even suspects I am rehearsing. By the time reality turns out to be smaller, my body has already paid for the larger version. That cost adds up. People don’t always see that. I do. And some days, I feel angry that my own mind has become such an unsafe room to wait in.