Proper Anxiety Attire

My anxiety today is so huge and weighty and so very, very present that I’m thinking of giving it a birth name and its own gym membership.

I’m not focusing on not having anxiety because that would mean getting more anxious trying to figure out why I’m anxious and doing that just feeds into the thinking that if I can figure out why I’m anxious, I would stop being anxious. As if it’s all a game of what’s wrong with this picture? And I can never find the wrong thing in the picture, the parrot’s wing or whatnot, that is really a fish’s fin or is upside down and it becomes crazy-making which we don’t want because anxiety is plenty enough to have.

It’s better just to put my anxiety on like a hat and just wear it all day. The key thing, though, is to make sure the hat I select is pretty nondescript. Anxiety reflex points me to the closest snood or a combo of a Jackie pillbox and thick black veil. Such headgear would elicit questions.

Why are you anxious?

I don’t want questions because the answer is always “nothing” which is unsatisfactory and seems secretive even when it isn’t.

I also don’t want to infect anyone else with my anxiety which I believe is not only infectious but highly contagious. It makes matters worse if my severely-hatted self makes other people anxious. And it can happen. It’s like I’m the only one who knows we’re about to have a nuclear war but I’m not telling anyone but they’re guessing that must be what’s happening. I’m telling you anxiety can spread like fucking typhoid.

So I’m just going to sit here with my nondescript hat, hum a little, look out the window at the dog peeing across the street, mind my own business, and wait for it to pass, float on down the block to the next house, and tie someone new in knots for a day or two. I’m patient that way.