Anxiety can be a weird thing to struggle with.

I've written a lot about how I worry and how I feel the worrying affects all areas of my life. It can actually prevent me from moving forward to the point where I stay stationary and don't take action on anything. It can hinder me, even though I sometimes feel its primary purpose is to keep me safe.

Anxiety is something there's a very small window for in your life.

However, my anxiety is not going away. I've tried to learn to recognize it and embrace it and act around it, but that hardly ever works. Even as I try, the anxiety gets bigger and has a louder voice in my head.

September 30, or Rain Rain Don't Go Away

Certain books are for the summer time.

The Great Gatsby, for instance, with all its talk of the glorified beach life on Long Island feels uncomfortable when read anywhere save a porch in the sunlight or a towel on the shore. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with its romantic scenes on Franny's fire escape make me envision the steamy heat that radiates from NYC sidewalks.

For me, Wuthering Heights is a summer book, possibly because I read it for the first time in the summer, and possibly because its setting is anything but warm. The contrast somehow works.

Also for me, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, because the summer of 2003 is when I spent most of the days in Pennsylvania and had only the Quidditch World Cup for company. I could have read it five times for all I know.

However, To Kill a Mockingbird is another of those books, but my time reading it has lapsed into Autumn (because I JUST CAN'T FINISH 1984). On the island, it still feels like summer, but today I woke up to the comforting sound of rain drops coming through my window. The house feels damp, and its the perfect day to read.

I am also relieved, for the very first time, that this blistering lonely summer is fading into cooler days.

But it made me wonder, I don't know that I have any Autumn books. This is usually a time when I pat myself on the back for a season well read, and focus my attention towards getting into the swing of school. But this year, I have no such preoccupation, and I dragged my feet with George Orwell to the point where I cannot really justify taking a break.

Decisions, decisions.

A Certain Degree of Uncertainty

This morning I woke up and I switched on the light above my head. I rolled over and checked the time. I realized I must have slept through my alarm. Inconsequential since I had nowhere to be.

I opened a book and I sat still for an hour reading about the adventures of two people who are learning important life lessons. I went upstairs and I drank a cup of black coffee and ate a piece of toast.

I read for awhile longer and then I ate Chinese food out of paper containers. I sat on my stoop and waited for my brother to depart from the bus. Together we sat in the sun for a little while as he asked me why the leaves have to fall off the trees. He ate spirals of bologna and watched cartoons while I attempted to finish a crossword puzzle.

I crossed my legs on the couch and tried to plow on with my book but I stopped myself. I am frustrated. I feel as if I'm doing nothing, but nothing by who's standards? I feel inactive, but not in the physical sense. I know that I DO things, but I am plagued by the restless feeling that I am not DOING anything.

I suppose a certain degree of uncertainty is good, but for how much longer will I feel this... displaced?

September 8,

Today was hot, just like every other day this summer that proceeded it. The humidity blurred the air over the sidewalk and something smelled sharp and metallic. Everything was exactly the same as it had been the day before, except everything was shifted and different.

If you listened carefully you would hear sirens flying past on the avenues, firetrucks traveling to fires that were unexpected at this point in the year, but still occurring because of the oppressive heat. If you listened harder, you would hear the thick and constant rush of air moving through stale leaves that were ready to make their journey to the ground, the branches that had proudly held them all summer were tired and drooping. If you listened even harder then that, you would hear the loud squeal of the old brakes of a school bus a half a mile away.

In the middle of the baking city, where so many kids were melting in classrooms and thinking of sparkling swimming pools, I sat on my stoop and thought about the changing seasons.

I don't like the changing of the seasons because I'm sensitive to what it all means. Four times a year I get anxious and over tired, I want to crawl away into the month before and forget the fact that time marches on.

I watched the grass wave as a rare breeze came through my street and I listened to my brother and sister recount their first day at school and I wanted to get up and run away. Run south, where summer never ever ends. Run somewhere foreign, where the changing seasons would be the last thing on my mind.

Autumn especially makes me think of things I'd rather not dwell on like my lack of academic life this year, or how much I miss the colorful fields of Highbury.

I sat on my stoop and thought about how even though I resented it, time was still moving forward and soon it would be the end of the first day of school and the sky would be changing to dark blue. Despite never having smoked, I wanted a cigarette like a usually do in those moments because I feel its the proper accesory to all of my angst.

I sat on my stoop and had the one thought that can cripple anyone, "I am the only one who feels this way."

And then I got up and went back inside.

The life of a flower
once picked
is brief
yet ferocious in all its impact.

August Strolls

I regret to inform
that my introverted nature
tends to make me choose
walks
instead
of
drives
for the sole purpose of wasting time.

And when walking,
there is only so long
I can avoid
thinking thoughts
in the
first
person.

I don't feel alone.
I do not feel less.
But,
in the moments when I whisper to God,
and try to hear if he whispers back
I know that it is quieter here.

Twas' a Weird Feeling,

Last night in the junction between evening and night she pulled up into the driveway and let the engine run for a few seconds, pausing to enjoy the air conditioning. She took a deep breath and let her hand linger on the car door not wanting to leave the stillness it provided. As the door swung open, the escapable heat of the past few weeks swept in to meet her. She hurried out, ducking her head against the whipping wind that was already carrying raindrops.

Somewhere not very far away lightning struck and thunder cracked instantaneously against the sky. She quickened her steps up the stairs, feeling a familiar panic begin to build.

Her hand, unfamiliar with the need to unlock the door fumbled uncertainly as it slid the key into the lock. The stale air of the living room was easy to breath and she paused in the light of the overhead lamp as it flickered with another peal of thunder.

For longer then necessary she turned on no other lights. She walked slowly and deliberately to the kitchen and stared out of the sliding glass doors. The storm was coming with intensity and it was welcome though inconveniently timed. She stared passed her reflection in the glass and watched the trees bend and sway.

Another crackle of lightning struck behind a far off hill.

Absentmindedly she ran her hand through her hair. It was longer then she usually kept it and she could feel it land against her elbows when she hitched her hands on her hips. It felt dry and dead from the sun and chlorine, as it would until September when summer would end.

As she watched the storm approach she felt the fear she normally worked so hard to control rise up in her chest, but it was more of an impulse then anything. Usually in the summer she could ignore the fear a bit better then this, she could focus on the sunlight and the way it danced on the water. She could fill the in between moments with laughter and push the fear away until it stopped trying to get her attention.

As she watched the storm turn the sky different colors, she thought of the lights that were not turned on behind her. She thought of the things that could be hiding in the shadows. She thought of the way the light had probably slanted throughout the afternoon and then the walls had dimmed as night fell. She thought there might be something important there, but she was at a loss for learning lessons while she was alone.

The sky finally broke and she turned away from the door. She missed the lightning but heard the thunder that made the light flicker in the living room. She grabbed the flashlight from the pantry just in case.

For the first time in a long time, she wished for autumn. This summer was hot and unfamiliar and she wished for the stillness that the passing of the trees would bring.