Anxiety.

As we grow up, we realise life is not all sunshine and flowers, life isn't a Frank Ocean song. With laughter, came disappointment soon. With disappointment, came expectations. Expectations from loved ones which if you didn't live upto, you dreaded your existence. And isn't that what life's about? Everything we do or say in a way, is just to be loved a little more. Being an infant, I thought I was invincible, as if the world was my canvas and I was the painter. Soon I realised I was the canvas and my painter became the people around me. I let people paint the canvas of my life, I let them dictate my life. And was it out of fear? Fear that I would not be liked, fear that, at the end I would be left alone. My canvas soon became painted with shades of betrayal, a little darker as I grew up, which slowly seeped into my subconscious and became a little part of me called "insecurities." Everywhere I went, everyone I met, I only had this tugging feeling which emerged from my insecurities. Anxiety. Thoughts crowded the empty spaces in my head and this deafening white noise overtook while people were talking in the crowd. "What if no one actually likes me here?" "Would anyone really miss me if I weren't here?" And these thoughts soon affected the way I perceived reality and made every feeling a bit heavier. Soon I realised, it wasn't just me who felt this way. Almost everyone felt this way and I took comfort in knowing there were people who understood the way I felt as they felt it too. But that wasn't enough. Other people released their stress through partying, smoking, working, drugs, etc. I always found the metaphor behind smoking very beautiful. Something people would die for would kill them. "Small releases of death" is what I used to call it. My release was my writing, so here I am. And maybe at the end, no matter how deeply we feel, we should think lighter. Do things lighter. Dance. Sing. Write. Create. Because life is art and we must be so naive to think that we do not matter. Life imitates art.