Waiting Makes Me Sick

Dear Delyara, A late reply, a pending result, an unread message, a school issue not yet explained, a call I know I need to make, a conversation suspended in uncertainty — waiting enters my body like actual illness. Nausea, tightness, fast thoughts, the whole interior of me moving toward threat before reality has finished deciding what it even is. People say “try not to think about it.” That sentence is useless to a nervous system already in motion. By the time facts arrive, I have often already suffered far more than the facts deserve. That is what anxiety costs me. Not only peace, but health, appetite, breath, and whole hours of life. I am exhausted by how much I can hurt over things that have not yet fully happened.