It Will Pass, I Know It Will

Stress and anxiety are longtime friends of mine
They sit in the corner of my mind, gnawing at my thoughts,
Turning me into someone I don’t want to be
I see them in the corner of my eye
I feel them, like water in my lungs
Forcing me to take gasping breaths
In a room full of unused oxygen
It feels like the dam is about to break
Like a big wave will knock me off my feet
And I will drown in a whirlwind of anticipation and worry

I try to tell myself that it will be over faster than I think it will
That the fabric of time has a way of wrinkling up strangely
During times like these
But my thoughts run too quickly
And I can’t grab hold of any of them

My body tries to fight this deranged enchantment
But it loses, very badly
When I step out of the shower every night
My face appears in the clouded mirror
And I see two black holes where my eyes should be:
The product of sleepless and dark, dark nights

The last time I saw myself like this
Was a few months ago
In the days leading up to my physics final
I woke at four in the morning
The nightmares of the disturbing holes in my face
Plaguing my pitiful mind
It’s disturbing to be afraid of your own self
In a confusing daze, I wrote the best poem I’ve ever written
“Her Dark Eyes,” it was called
So it wasn’t me who wrote it,
It was the stress monster inside me
She’s a good poet, I think

But I know it will pass
I tell myself that
It will pass
I know it will

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I know that there are better things I could be doing than complaining about how stressed I am, but I’m just trying my best. Hopefully, all this will end soon and I can resume writing my regular type of blog posts. The ideas are in my head, I just can’t seem to get them out. It’s like trying to pick up a penny with a gloved hand, or like trying to talk underwater. (“Her Dark Eyes,” if anyone wants to read it.)