Devil On My Shoulder
Anxiety sneaks up on me at anytime, on any day, in any situation. Anxiety does not care if I’m on a date, in a work meeting or sometimes when I’m out with my best friends.
Anxiety is the little devil that sits on my left shoulder and will sometimes push angel off to the right when it wants to rear its ugly-horned-head when triggered.
When angel falls I begin to feel my temperature rise and my whole body begins to heat up like I’m in a living version of Hell.
I try and talk to myself off the ledge and ask angel to keep holding on so my mind doesn’t spiral any deeper; sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.
I pray that the meds my doctor prescribed will work this time but sometimes the brain is way more powerful than any prescription.
The feeling of fight or flight kicks into full throttle. I remind myself (not at loud) that I’m not that little girl anymore who moved almost a dozen times…
Now my heart beats faster and faster. The pep talk inside my head is not working.
I’m not that little girl anymore who was relentlessly picked on and tormented in school for looking different with my church donated clothes and smelling like mother’s cigarette smoke and cat piss…
I’m a big city girl now who clawed her way out of two decades of neglect and abuse at the hands of her pill-popping-addict mother and those who tried to step in to be “mother”.
I FOUGHT HARD TO ESCAPE I continue to remind myself.
Earned my career, adopted a rescue dog and cat because I know what it feels like to be given up on by the one who is supposed to love and nourish you; and finally have an apartment that’s all my own that I made into my first real home.
However, my heart begins to race and now I can feel it pumping into my throat…
I’m not my mother I scream inside. I’m not an addict. I’m not cruel. I made the right decisions in life. I escaped. I am a survivor I scream inside!
Adrenaline takes over and I excuse myself from the group and close my door. I take big, deep breathes and talk to Angel beckoning her to come back, pleading with Adult, Mature, Strong, Beautiful, ME to come back!
Big. Deep. Breathes. I’m okay. I’m not that little girl anymore.