The Meeting Was Only Forty Minutes

Dear Delyara, The meeting was only forty minutes. If someone else described it, it would sound completely manageable. A room, a few questions, a polite conversation, nothing dramatic. But for me, anxiety turned it into a whole event that started the night before. I thought about what I would wear. What if I sounded stupid. What if my voice shook. What if they asked something I couldn’t answer. What if my face went red. What if I looked nervous and then got nervous about looking nervous. By the time I got there, I already felt as if I had survived something. This is the exhausting part of living like this. Ordinary life becomes emotionally expensive.