Author Information
Anxiety
Anxiety
Daniel Bravo
Bernardo Herrera
You are walking through the hallway, but it seems to get bigger with every step you take.
You look down to the floor, thinking maybe that will make it easier. But it doesn’t. So you start walking faster. A weird feeling starts to invade your mind, and all of the sudden it starts to invade your body. First, your hands get sweaty, your heart starts racing and your legs get heavier.
You hear a girl asking if you are alright. You look up and realize she is as beautiful as her voice. You want to look casual, like those people on the movies. But you only end up emitting unrecognizable sounds that make you feel even worse. She leaves, and you keep thinking about how you always scare them away.
The thoughts start to flood your mind with such force you lose grip of reality. You can only think about the exams getting closer, everything you have to study and every homework you have to do. And now you are worried about scaring other girls away. Great. Because even when you are weird, you want to be loved. Then you tell yourself you are not weird, just a little broken.
You finally get to the classroom, everyone is already sitting and the class is about to start. You look at the clock and realize those five minutes felt like an hour.
You sit down, not at the front, but just close enough to the entrance to get out as quickly as possible. The teacher asks you something you barely hear. He repeats the question but your mind is elsewhere and math is the last thing you are thinking about. He tells you to go wash you face. You really wonder how washing your face will put out the raging inferno going on your mind. But you just get up and get to the restroom as instructed.
You wash your face because you don’t have anything to lose, you know it doesn’t work, but you do it anyway. Even when the water is cold, you feel like you are burning up. You realize the door is moving, some is about to come in, you think about the guys that flushed your face down the toilet the last time. They’re not, it’s just one guy, your typical average Joe, so calm and steady. He looks at you and reaches out to you just asking if you are OK. You storm out without a word, you would have loved his help, but you know he could do nothing, nobody knows what it’s like to be afraid of your own mind.
Now it’s 6 o’clock in the afternoon, almost everybody has left school, but you stay there, your back to the wall, eyes on the ground, because it doesn’t matter to you being here or being home or being anywhere, there’s no shelter, there’s no home, there’s nowhere to run if the problem is on your mind, you believe that since that day you heard it on TV.
