Musings Of An Anxious Mind

Have you ever found yourself

Breaking into sudden tears

In the middle of the road,

Right after an evening spent

In the company of beloved friends,

Or maybe in the midst of cooking your favorite dish

In a lonely kitchen, while gazing into the

Burning fire and the empty walls?

Tears that are in denial

Of a cause to be crying about,

Of a reason to be unhappy,

Yet flowing, as if with the right

To voice their many stories

Written in each crystal drop.

Have you ever woken up

In the dead of the night

Struggling to catch your breath

Making a failed attempt to scream,

Unable to move

Or distinguish between

The dark room around you and the

Nightmare of a

Black abyss you just fell into?

Or maybe spent nights

Staring into the ceiling above you

Counting the invisible grey spots on it,

Imagining stars in an open sky

While crying yourself to sleep

Humming the lyrics of a self-written lullaby.

Do you feel your body turn cold,

Your legs go limp

And your heart throb rapidly

At the simple prospect of

Catching a bus, talking to a stranger

Or walking down a flight of stairs?

Have obsessive thoughts of

Compulsiveness ever

Driven you crazy, or smothered you like an eccentric, possessive lover?

Every want, becoming a desperate need,

From binge-eating junk to binge-watching reruns of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Every need turning into a compulsion.

Unfinished tasks,

Unopened messages

Unnecessary thoughts,

Unanswered questions;

Have they dangled over your head

Like impending bills to pay when you are broke,

Like an itch you die to scratch off

When your hands are locked,

Like writing a story without characters

Or a poem without feelings?

Have you ever battled the mayhem called anxiety,

Trapped as a prisoner inside your own head,

And your core strangled by a string of karmic oddities? Have you?

If you have, then

You are just like me.

Just like me

And a 100 million others

Fighting restless minds

Silently, clueless that too,

Climbing every day towards an unseen summit,

Breathing in and breathing out

Hopes of someday reaching a serene retreat.

Maybe songs of peace await us there,

We shall sing along to the same beats

Played to so-called bearers of ‘sanity’.

We are after all

Only just as flawed

As a human soul needs to be.