Dear Anxiety - August 2026 Entries
Notes from an imperfect person with generalized anxiety disorder, MDD/PTSD.
Dear Anxiety,
You keep me in the shade often. I become afraid of the sunshine, the sunrise, and the sunset. Shadows and nighttime feel like a comforting embrace.
Crowds frighten me during the day. They remind me of every little imperfection your voice echoes through me: the buzzing of wasps, the mechanical vibrations of cars, people being in love—surrounded by love.
I wander through my space during the day, creating art and dreaming of the warmth of an imagined future love. A love so warm that loneliness can no longer grasp my neck with its piercing claws.
I step outside when the city is asleep because, Anxiety, you are also in a deep slumber.
Maii gets to be Maii at 3 a.m.
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Dear Anxiety,
Fuck you. I stutter with my words; I get flustered with my voice. It’s hard for me to communicate with them, the souls around me. It’s hard for me to connect with them. I push them away because it’s easier.
Sometimes it’s easier for me to stutter in silence inside my head than to try and voice out my heart. But now people tell me they love my voice, yet my voice scares me.
My voice has rested inside of my throat for so long, its raspy to me, it’s scared to come out like a turtle under its heavy shell.
I’m used to have longer lingering monologues inside my head and utter small, tiny words, yet with the ones I’ve collapsed my wall with I don’t know how to shut up.
Fuck you, Anxiety.
I don’t know how to keep it all inside anymore.
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Dear Anxiety,
I doubt the skin I wear on top of my soul. I doubt the hairiness on my flesh, the curves on my body, the light that sits on it.
Does it deserve sunshine, does it deserve love?
You protect me sometimes-yet sometimes you make me question my existence. I deserve to be alive, to be loved, but I can’t allow myself to be. I doubt it, I doubt me and I doubt you.
I doubt others professing their platonic like of my entity. Evidences, analytic and wary of love. I always told myself; I wouldn’t become like my mom stuck inside a loop of doubting others and doubting my own worth.
Yet I became a version of her, afraid and wary of people’s intention towards me. The smiles and their face bare questions and thoughts.
Are they sincere Anxiety?
Are you? With your blazing thoughts.
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Dear Anxiety,
Deep down, deep inside of me I feel like I failed my childhood, my teenage years and my twenties.
A friend of mine admitted himself voluntarily.
He feels like life is no longer worth experiencing, the vibrational pulls, the ups and downs.
I don’t know how to reach him because deep down,
No matter how grateful I am, proud, fearless and fearful, excited and hopeful, part of me feels like I am a wasted space.
Surrounded by eyes that view my potential. Potential lingers, will potential swallow me whole?
Will I climb on all fours at the mercy of life to soar beyond the thunderstorm and reach the eye of tranquility?
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Dear Anxiety,
I hate watching the famous three dots as someone close to me writes their message.
I overthink too much, so I disabled the notification, and the read option.
I rather see not the preview but the final message.
The three dots for anyone else is just a technicality, part of an app,
For a neurodivergent it’s a maybe, it’s a what if,
It’s a flood of thoughts and possibilities,
Intertwined with you Anxiety the anchor of my heart ache and sometimes the anchor that protects me.
Three dots cause just as much of a turbulence to me than a single hesitation.
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Dear Anxiety,
I love Fridays
and Saturdays.
They are slow, they are lapses of frozen time, where I get to remove the weight of masking.
I get to remove the skin, the flesh,
Where I wear a heavy smile and control my composure.
I don’t have to pretend anything to anyone; I don’t have to tell them how much I just want to fall asleep and be inside my dream world.
Just wandering around inside my imagination, feeling loved finding love and going through a variance of memories.
Perhaps dreams are flashes of memories of my past life. Like a short film, momentarily fleeting.
I dread Sundays because the cycle repeats.
But I’ve change, something changed Anxiety, I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m starting to give less of a fuck.
Less of a fuck about wandering eyes staring at me on the street.
A bit less about using my rusty voice.
A bit less about pleasing my family constantly.
A bit less about professor’s opinion on my art.
A bit less about the mess.
A bit less about you.
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Dear Anxiety,
I needed an orchid in my life, a flora of wisdom.
I love them, I loved them. But as I notice the small strand of white hair on my scalp at twenty-seven years old, I realize I’ve grown, I’m also wisdom.
I need to trust me, Anxiety.
I’ve left you running in the driver’s seat too long.
I am not sorry that I did, I was in a period where I needed to hide Maii to protect myself from more internal wounds, so I thank you for driving this flesh around.
I’m not carefree completely yet but I want to start to be courageous, start to allow Maii to peak outside her window and walk outside.
Barefoot in the driver’s seat.
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Dear Anxiety,
I almost closed a door on a life changing opportunity.
I wanted to hide behind you,
I almost cancelled that meeting,
But I took charge,
I asked for accommodations in the way that allows Maii to have the strength to carry,
Carry an open heart full of energy and passion,
I did not cancel this time,
I showed up for my art, my values and myself.
I drove my flesh, my soul, my brain and my heart this week and I’m proud.
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Dear Anxiety,
I hate to leave unfinished.
But I am learning to endure the process, even thrive in it,
It’s okay that I didn’t finish this project, this conversation and my plans for the day.
I am deserving of sunshine and rest,
I laid bare on my bed, guilt-free
Guilt no longer hold shackles on your ankles Anxiety.
I’m worried about the unfinished,
But I’m excited about the steps.
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Dear Anxiety,
Inside this six foot-three body mass of one-hundred-eighty-two kilos lies a small soft spirit.
Gooey inside like a mars bar.
I wish people were not so afraid of me.
I was raised in an environment where emotions were to be locked away so my face doesn’t always know what dress to wear in an instant,
But I promise you the inside of me feels every shift,
Every vibration,
Every sensation,
I wish they knew, I’m a huge softie trying to carry the universe on her shoulders.
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Dear Anxiety,
Some days I fall in love with Vincent Van Gogh and other days I fear I may become him,
Don’t get me wrong, I do love my work, but I supposed for quite sometimes I’ve come into terms that one day I will die,
One day I will maybe go into a mystical land of promise or maybe everything becomes pitch black, who knows,
I wish that as I create and I vibrate through each work, each brush stroke each creation and each word,
that I won’t be failed like Vincent Van Gogh,
That while I am here there will be people that see Maii, that see’s my words, my brush strokes and we form this mythical universe of everlasting emotions.
Never ending, forever connected, combating fleeting time.
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Dear Anxiety,
Somedays I get called beyond slumber into a floating world where my feet do not hurt, my lungs are not heavy, and I am free to ponder.
I have a part of me that desires to walk barefoot on sandy beaches quitting everything and everyone,
Working part-time and creating art every day. I want to do this so badly, get four cats and disconnect from the past that hurt me so much, but a big and compelling part of me wants to break all the patterns of my family’s past.
A heavy anchor of repayment to my mother, who left behind her entire life to try and make something worthy for me, I owe her to live the best life I can live, whether through monetary success, education, health and love.
But somedays, my heart calls me and my brain wants to sleep.
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Dear Anxiety,
I don’t know why I do this in cinemas and any public space, but I always opt to sit near the exit.
Perhaps part of me is afraid of being seen, of lingering amongst the crowds knowing that I have no one, alone and lonely.
Perhaps sitting near the exit makes it easier for me to run,
Run away from the darkness, run away from the constant rolling thoughts, the rollercoaster, the loop.
I don’t want to run.
I don’t want to run Anxiety,
But people scare me, How in a split second we can go from platonic lovers to strangers and a deleted memory.
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Dear Anxiety,
Is it okay that on most days I don’t want to hide underneath the moonlight’s embrace and the night’s pull, the comforting detail-less blanket.
Is it okay that I want to walk when the sun is out and the birds are chirping on the trees or the pavement singing their songs of freedom and joy.
Is it okay that I don’t want to be someone’s once upon a time, but I want to be someone.
I want to be someone that is witnessed, devoured with pace and time, listened carefully and embraced through direct eye contact and crinkles of facial expressions.
Is it okay Anxiety that I want to live so desperately, vibrantly and quietly at the same time.
Is it okay that I desire to be witnessed, to witness to see and experience. I want to be someone’s happy ever after, someone’s beginning and everlasting ever telling ending.
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Dear Anxiety,
I’m a vibrant painting, too complicated to be summarized by black and white, yet black and white as still vibrant colors and shades.
I have a heart,
I have veins coursing through my skin,
I have delicate skin,
I have a conscious,
I have a busy mind,
A heavy heart,
And a hopeful soul.
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Dear Anxiety,
I’m a trans-woman,
I’m a woman,
I have a hairy body, a hairy butt, I’m fat, my heart is full of wisdom and my mind full of knowledge,
I am a storm of colors beautiful and fragile weak and strong like Chinese porcelain,
I don’t need a knife cutting my dick, my balls nor need to grow out my breasts to be a woman,
I am a trans-woman,
I’m a woman,
You can try to erase us, to erase me, but I’ll always remain like oxygen, time might be fleeting but I’m not.
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Dear Anxiety,
I love Kintsugi,
The idea that broken pieces can become whole again, transformed from brokenness to mended into another form of evolution and rebirth,
The cracks and the gold to hold the cracks does not make them any weaker,
Perhaps the cracks make it stronger, more beautiful and more whole.
It’s not plain, it’s not perfect, it’s not a mold that can ever be repeated,
Its perfection in its imperfection, the cracks form to tell a story as the bonding of materials tells the story of a vibrant soul going through phases of life,
Exploring, learning, healing and growing. Phases are not meant to be discarded; they are steps and part of the process called existence.
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