My Anxiety With NMO

Sometimes, it’s like my brain is in a revolving door. The thoughts spin fast, sometimes slow or not at all.

My brain’s exhaustion is from my thoughts constantly dancing pirouettes with no cease to stop. I carry around the weight of a million emotions but only to express none. Just plastering a smile across my face like a middle school art project.

Attempting to hide my anxiety

I’d rather lie my way into the "I’m okays and I’m fines." I’d rather that than sit and discuss the thoughts that consume my being.

But outside the walls of my brain are others judgment and misunderstanding coupled with pity and a selfishness complex. So it’s best to keep everything inside locked up like a U-Haul storage. The thoughts that escape are carefully crafted to create an illusion of how I truly feel.

The deception that I am OK only travels so far before the locked up intrusive thoughts make their way to my tongue, giving up my hiding spot from within.

How the world sees me

It’s only so long before the fabrication of how I feel gets unraveled like a dropped roll of aluminum foil: Even if I try to wrap the thoughts back up, it’s still a crinkly roll and not the smooth texture it once was.

I fear my mind. That one day the keypad to those self deprecating convictions is released to the world.

If only I could see my own reflection the way the world does, I might have a friend in me. But the dark negativity internally has to be woven into the bright positivity that projects from my not so always clean spoken mouth.

If I slip in the act, the indubitable shame will fill me like a water basin after a fresh rain. The sheepish nature will settle in if the outside strangers know the daily debacle that burns my amygdala.

Upholding an image for others

My pride has put me in a position to come to naught. And unfortunately, my pride is placed higher on the totem pole than any ounce of dignity I can possess. If they say it takes 30 days to build a habit I feel like bad thoughts have become a routine habitually for 30 days, 12 times a year.

I’m stuck in a cycle of never-ending words that continuous demean the very being I am as well as the decisions I make. Broken as the record that skips, but seemingly appearing as a freshly picked bouquet of flowers.

Upholding an image for others, holds greater weight in my own mind than appeasing the one being who carries more value: me. Why am I not the one to be fighting the war raging within? Instead, I sit back silently as I watch the fire erupt with no signs of an extinguisher.

Anxiety and NMO

If I could paint a picture of the mental state of my brain it would look something like this:

• Black canvas.
• Black background.
• Rainbow selection of spilled paint scattered across walls and floor
• Black figures
• Words running around like a never ending, after movie credits.

If my mind were a daycare there would be no nap time. If my brain were a 9-5 job, there would be no lunch break. Some call it the way my brain works. I call it living with anxiety.