Storm Warning

this year has proven to test me in many ways:

dealing with a disruption,

challenging my ideas of self worth,

facing loneliness,

dealing with my drowning anxiety,

and just when I thought that was all starting to quiet down and

I got past the disruption,

gained a new self worth,

embraced my loneliness

and calmed my anxiety,

the storm hit and tore me back down in just one day.

I am struggling to find balance between 

the desire to not be rude 

and my overwhelming need for space.

a flash flood tore through my safe space today

I am flooded with stress,

uneasiness in my own home,

fear for the future

and an inability to breathe without a distraction.

I desperately want to escape this home that we built in the last 3 years.

I want to run

but a global pandemic is keeping me stifled inside.

please let me leave!

this is a test —

to prove to myself that all I have gained in the last 4 months

is worth keeping and practicing

and I am so worried I can’t do it.

I do not want to break down again.

I wish this feeling of drowning just stopped existing;

I have never been a strong swimmer

and I am afraid it will beat me...

one night tragically unraveled me —

I am disrupted again,

my self worth is diminishing,

I’m afraid to be alone

and I am drowning in an anxiety

that I am terrified won’t ever let me surface.