A night with anxiety (written last November or so)

Anxious. Jaw clenched, abdominal wall contracted, neck stiff, brow furrowed. Jimmies rustled. I just want to go to sleep.

My heartbeat is muffled through swollen eustachian tubes but deafening against distressed tympanic membranes. I just want to go to sleep.

The soles of my feet are burning hot but my blood feels cold, deep in my chest. I can taste a ghost of dinner in my throat. My forehead is slightly damp with sweat, but there is a shiver and a bone-deep ache in my arms.

Just go to sleep already. There's work in the morning. There's nothing to worry about that can't wait. Life isn't really that hard. It can wait. Go to sleep.

What are you even worried about? Do you even know?
The thoughts run so fast there's no telling one from the next-- just a constant, drowning feeling. Water pressure builds exponentially as you sink deeper and deeper and it becomes proportionately difficult to keep your lungs from collapsing, to keep your ribs from breaking, to resist the urge to breathe in the water. It will hurt like hell, but only for a minute.

I just want to go to sleep. I'll admit I'm not very much interested in waking up later, but first things first, here.

My heartbeat, it pounds in dull thuds against the fatty padding of my brain. The constant, rhythmic change in pressure blurs my vision with its offense. I hurt. I'm tired.

I'm hot. I'm cold. I'm irritated because I have to get up for work at some point and really need some goddamn sleep and it is such a simple and basic thing to need, something anyone, anything can do, but I can't. I can't.

I know my heart pounding is just the anxiety. I've wasted enough medical professionals' time to reasonably prove there is nothing wrong with my heart-- it's just my brain trying to kill me. But the cruel part is, my brain is all I have, the only way I can experience myself and the world, my literal eyes and ears. How am I to contradict it? How do I become separate from myself? When did I become multiple beings working in conflict?

Goddammit

I just want to go to sleep.