"There's a pit in your chest, right in between where you think your lungs are. It weighs you down every time you take a breath. A buzzing current of anxiety runs through your veins and your heart throbs in time to the tapping of your fingers. Your mind flickers from one worry to the next; every task seems larger and more difficult to accomplish than what you expected. You know you have to do them; you know this. And yet, every time you try to start, your mind blanks and your chest tightens, and you find your attention flickering, flickering, flickering; hopping from one thing to the next but not stopping. You feel restless, so you bounce your leg and you tap your desk and you fiddle with the nearest object. Nervous energy flows uselessly through you, a buzzing current that's not leaving, only increasing. It drags on, riding on the loud ba-dump, ba-dump of your heart. You find yourself stuck in your head, thought's flickering by you as you try to soothe what you swear is an increase of the drum beating in your chest and a clamp that's squeezing your lungs; but it just continues the cycle, until only time can calm you down."

- January 25, 2019