Alethea Jimison
Author, Poet & Truth-teller
Anxiety
Anxiety is a symptom
of the fear of vulnerability.
We hide behind false smiles
as we present an acceptable identity.
I’m writing a book
that makes me cry with every tap of a key.
A teardrop leaves a fiery trail down my cheek.
Writing is my therapy —
but it is also the very thing that haunts me.
Words pour out of my soul
like a ghost that possessed me unknowingly,
telling the world my story.
I have these secrets
I kept hidden inside me —
secrets I dressed in makeup,
respectability,
articulation,
and intellectual conversations.
Anxiety is a symptom
of our inauthenticity.
Sometimes we play a role for so long,
we forget who we were meant to be.
Instead,
we pay other people
to help us find our life purpose,
because we have amnesia
from believing we’re worthless.
Anxiety is a symptom
of living in a constant state of illusion.
Anxiety is the manifestation
of a fear-based life
that keeps you
in a state of emotional pollution.
We end up
replaying traumatic memories
and imagining worst-case scenarios
of every possibility.
Truth becomes distorted
by beliefs
that are limiting.