On my 18th birthday, I went cliff jumping in an abandoned rock quarry. I was not scared to jump. I was scared that a brain-eating amoeba would find its way into my bloodstream and kill me.
On my first trip to my gynecologist, I wasn’t scared of a stranger seeing my vagina. I was scared that the speculum would get stuck inside of me and for some reason, it wouldn’t have been properly sterilized and then I would die of sepsis.
On the night before I left for New York, I wasn’t scared of the move. I was scared of whether the couch was going to fit up the stairs and where to stand on the sidewalk if I needed to tie my shoes.
On flights to and from London, I am not scared of the plane crashing. I am scared that someone will eat nuts. And then the air that they breathe will be recirculated into the air that I breathe and then I will die on a United Airlines flight over the Atlantic Ocean. In economy class.
I am a perpetually anxious person and anxiety turns molehills into meteors–it looks at the magnitude of minutia and amplifies it.
Which is to say that anxiety is a five-star telescope that shows me every part of every galaxy. Which is to say that I do not gaze at the stars, I obsess over them.
Which is to say that when my predisposed patterns and overworked obsessions get chaotic, my mind moves too fast for my body. This nebula of noise and noticing makes my limbs heavy.
Which is to say that it is exhausting to be aware of everything. Like sometimes when a star burns out, it collapses. Like sometimes when I burn out, I collapse into lapses of lethargy. These siestas of serotonin sometimes scare me.
Which is to say that I am not scared of space but I am scared of taking up too much space.
Which is to say that I have a bad habit of turning myself into a blip in societal solar systems and repeating myself.
Which is to say that anxiety turns molehills into meteors and meteors into meltdowns and meltdowns into the metronome of my own heartbeat.
Which is to say that I am not superstitious but I am super cautious. I do not step on sidewalk cracks and I always mind the gaps because too many things in life fall through.
Which is to say that I worry in metaphors. It takes ten million years for a star to form, but it only takes one-fourth of a second for its core to collapse. I can’t help but think that it’s the same for people too.
Which is to say that every minuscule fragment of a moment can change a life.
Which is to say that this is arguably any anxious person’s worst nightmare: that they cannot plan for what they have never considered.
Which is to say that there is matter that is not yet known, meteors of maybes and wavelengths of what-ifs.
Stillness is my only solstice.
Which is to say that when my days feel the longest and my nights feel the shortest, I am silent. And when my days feel the shortest and my nights feel the longest, I am restless. I can feel worry waxing. But, I can also feel it waning. Fading away into my periphery, until it is no longer a parallax of my perception. In these moments, I dream of the day when I will look up and just see the sky. No stars. No meteor showers. No distractions. Just the over all of overall.