Dear Anxiety,

Yes, you. The thief of time. I have been on this planet for forty-seven years, and you’ve been with me for at least forty. I don’t know when exactly you decided to climb into my head and start to take over, but you did a good job.

For many years, I thought you actually were me, rather than what you really are – a parasite, feeding off my mind, leeching my well-being, consuming my joy. You leave me unable to enjoy the moment. You take me back in time to previous mistakes I made, things I should not have done or said, and you replay them to me. You take me into the future, and show me standing alone, unloved, worthless. Even now – here and now – you show me all the different possibilities and options, and make me worry over every single choice, every single course of action.

I am paralyzed by indecision. I am living in a hall of mirrors where I hear, simultaneously, the echoes of every action I take and all the other actions I did not take, and I will forever doubt I said the right thing or made the right choice because you always drag me back, whispering “what if, what if, what if…” You have cut me off from my friends, and family. You have isolated me, like a fly caught and bound in a web, so you can work on me at your leisure, knowing nobody and nothing can save me.

But it is not all your fault. I have given you power. I have listened to you first out of caution, and then fear. I have fought you with poorly chosen weapons – alcohol, and other drugs – and wondered how it was that you simply came back stronger and meaner the morning after.

But now I have some new weapons; healthy diet, fitness, exercise, talking with others. I know I will never be rid of you, but in the years ahead of me I will learn to live with you. I will learn to separate your voice from my own, and to pay you less and less attention.

You may be here to stay, my unwelcome guest, but you will no longer run the show.