I “Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” that’s what everyone said. I hated that phrase. I was about ten when the signs started to appear. One minute I was fine, sitting in my same spot in the minivan, right behind mom. Just watching the dark silhouettes of trees pass in the window. Then it would hit. My throat would close up on me. My body burned like a rapidly spreading forest fire. Sweat poured from every pore of my little elementary school body. My body had turned on me. I felt the muscles in my throat clench, as if invisible hands were grasping around my neck. I couldn’t breathe. My young lungs, though weak with asthma, longed to inflate and just exhale. My body quaked. My chest pulsated so fast that I became nauseous. Though it lasted only minutes, hours seemed to pass by. It wasn’t until the fifth time, that my health was in question. II The room was dark. The doctor, though dressed in angelic white, seemed to work in a lab that to my ten-year-old eye looked like something straight out of a horror movie. There in the corner was a giant machine. Three times the size of my prepubescent body. It stood vertically, and had straps, meant to hold a man inside. And then I heard the words ‘get in’. I was strapped into this machine, standing up. From the corner of my eye I saw a nurse with a tray, carrying a jar and a straw. They forced me to drink an unbearable concoction. It was vile, and thick. It sank down my throat. Not only did I feel it, I got to see it. With a rod pressed up against my neck, gliding down my chest. I watched on screen as the slime slivered down throughout my body. “Great news,” the doctor said, “your son is fine; it’s all in his head.” III “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. It’s just in his head.” How reassuring, to know that the one place where I was thought to be safe, is the one place that does me the most bodily harm. Yet I’m fine. A decade later, and I’m still not completely free from “my mind.” One minute, at peace, happy and content, then just like that. Heart racing, sweat dripping, thoughts racing, lungs barely breathing. My body quakes, I’m standing still but I feel like I’ve been sprinting for miles. In that moment nothing can assuage my mind, but outside that moment the battle still wages. Even amidst the beauty of a great Midwestern sunrise, when everything else is calm and still, my thoughts rage against me. When will it attack, this anxious beast inside my mind. Even in times of peace, I found myself waiting for the storm. IV What even is the mind, and why does mine hate me so? The mind is not an organ. A mind cannot be touched. A mind cannot be tasted, smelt or even seen. Yet it exists. With what do I fight against it? Years back a shrink told me I could arm myself with this little green pill. “What good will a drug do me,” I thought. If the truth be told, I was petrified. This is the solitary life I knew. This “anxiety” was a part of me. If it dies out who will I be? My faith has gotten me to this point. In taking this pill do I rob God Himself of Divine intervention? Or are these the “mysterious ways” I’ve heard so much about. In taking this capsule, am I running away? Thus, becoming the coward who was too weak to triumph over his very self! But with so many questions unanswered, I found the pill already in my mouth. And as I swallowed, as it tumbled down my throat, in life’s bitter sweet irony I thought to myself, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”
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