Anxiety lives in a narrow hallway.A place untouched by light.I don't know when it first appeared, or how long I've been walking there. But I've been there, again and again.
The first time I noticed anxiety, it was on a perfectly ordinary day.A quiet weekday afternoon.Nothing had happened. And yet, the silence of my phone unsettled me.No messages. No calls. No reactions on social media.
That stillness made me feel as though I had been completely forgotten by the world.I turned my phone off and on. Checked the Wi-Fi. Drank a glass of water like nothing was wrong.That was when it began.
After that day, a hallway appeared inside me.Long and narrow. No windows. No doors. It stretched on and on.I kept walking through it. No one called me, but something pulled me in.
Anxiety crouches somewhere along those walls.It has no eyes, no face, no shape.But my body senses it.My heart is always the first to notice.
People call anxiety a coward.But I know the truth.Anxiety is sharp. Clever in terrifying ways.It knows exactly where I'm weakest.It knows exactly when to lock me at the end of the corridor.
Sometimes, it even saved me.It warned me of dangerous people.It kept me from speaking too soon.But most of the time, anxiety took up the space where better things could have lived.
Happiness needs sunlight to grow.And that hallway never lets the light in.
Now, I want to leave.Not to run away, but to stop living with anxiety as a roommate.To step out of the hallway, and build a house of emotions with many windows.
This writing is my first brick.