I lied and said I was busy.
I was busy, but not in a way a lot of people truly understand. I was busy slaughtering my free time with my roommate.
My roommate has a way of making sure I never feel lonely in a physical sense but can suggest that I’m the only person in the world, even when surrounded by a crowd. She makes sure I never wake up alone, although my bed is always impossibly cold, and has taken my advice of learning to sleep with one eye open so that I might get some rest every once in a while.
I’m not really sure when she came to me; I can’t even remember my life before her. We’ve influenced each other in ways that are still hard for me to comprehend.
She is the part of me I’m scared of. The mirror reflects not what I look like, but her: What I fear my appearance really is. That’s the only thing I haven’t learned to put a filter on. I’ve learned to sift out her senseless what-if questions and stunt their growth to a point where I can answer them myself.
My secret roommate, Anxiety, has exhausted my love for board games with her fondness for the kind of games I don’t enjoy.
She enjoys testing the speed limit of my heart with a barrage of concerns I have yet to contemplate, discovering which of us can make it race faster and faster in continuous circles about daily obstacles at a speed that threatens to throw my heart from my chest. Sometimes, I swear I feel it hit the wall in front of me and spiral to the floor with a sickening thud that makes it hard to look to see if it’s still beating.
Still, every time she picks it up and places it back where it belongs—albeit with a revolting beginning of a grin waiting to crinkle the edges of her eyes—I’ve noticed that even she doesn’t have the heart to look directly at me afterward.
Maybe our shared empathy creates a conflicting feeling about everything she causes.
Still, Anxiety never bothers to change. The power she holds over me causes her alarming height to drop a perpetual shadow over the steps of my existence. To her, it doesn’t matter if the nagging questions and spinning thoughts entangle my insides and muddle my brain, distorting my beliefs; the pressure knotted in my abdomen so intense with the will to escape that my mouth drops instinctively wishing to expel my distress.
It hasn’t gotten any easier living with her. My feet hold a consistent soreness with the eggshells I trudge over day after day.
But some days are better. After the years we’ve lost track of, she’s come to know me. She’s come to know that I have accepted the fact that she’s not leaving; I hope that fills her with some respect for me.
As much as her habits annoy me, and the games haven’t gotten any easier, we will be roommates for a lifetime. And having that, although unbearable at some times, is pretty special.
