The thing about anxiety is that it goes with me wherever I go. I can drive 650+ miles to the coast, sink my toes in the sand, look out into the sea and find that it is still there. There is no vacation.
It is there at every mile marker. It is there in the background of every captured memory. It packs itself and comes along for the bumpy ride. And it’s heartbreaking.
I can never put an out of office on my stress. I can never workout enough to work out my anxiety. I can never say, “sorry, I’m too busy today” for the depression of it. I can breathe it out and breathe it back in the next breath.
It’s part of me.
It’s the part of me that says I’m a failure when something fails to go to plan.
It’s the part of me that won’t let go – holding onto every painful memory.
It’s the part of me the replays every conversation, picking it apart and questioning every single detail.
It’s the part of me that hates myself; that thinks I’m ugly, worthless, stupid – a waste.
It’s the part of me the bubbles up and burns into rage.
It’s the part of me that recoils and runs away.
It’s the part of me that just wants to go home and is always searching for a safe place.
It’s the part of me that says I’m the worst mom when I feel I should be doing better.
It’s the part of me that thinks my husband deserves better – someone less complicated – someone less…me.
It’s the part of me that feels so unworthy of motherhood when others have experienced so much loss and longing for it.
It’s the part of me that makes a bad bike ride feel like a car wreck – constantly feeling the whiplash of it.
It’s the part of me that keeps from sleep. That makes me want to just go to bed and wake up on a different day. Even though anxiety will find me on that day, too.
It’s exhausting.
It’s the worst part of me because, all too often, it has taken the best of me. It spoils and weighs down and shuts off and starves until I’m sick and drowning and closed off and depleted.
Anxiety is a part of me.
But the thing about anxiety is that it is also not all of me. Because I am stronger for having failed. Because I hold onto hope. Because I know I am loved, deeply. Because I am much more beautiful inside from what has been weathered. Because I find peace in the healing. Because I have made a home in the heart of a partner who adores all of me. Because my kids still look at me like I hung the moon. Because even when the stars don’t align, I know there is flowering in the flawed.
Because I am enough.
And you are enough, too.
