Who am I to have a heart? If I could give it willingly, I would pull it out from its roots, unmoor it from its sleeping place, rip it from the earth. I hate the sound of it beating.

The sound reminds me of each and every time I have failed. I am alone, it screams. I am alone and you have failed. Die, it whispers as it holds me and kicks at my lungs. 

Where do I go where anxiety cannot rush in like tidal waters following the moon? Where can I go to drown it when I am drowning in it? This she-beast. 

If anxiety wore the pronouns he and him and his, what would my relationship to him be? Would he be like a brother I wrestle with on the floor while the phone rings over and over, a watchful monitor of latchkey kids? Or would he be like a father, using laughter as a vice to crush emotion's windpipe? In an uncle's clothes, anxiety would be that strange feeling that bubbles up from the gut but stays inside like a soda that's continuously shaken, the pressure never released. 

My anxiety does not call himself as such. My anxiety wears the faces of my childhood bullies. She sucks the corner of her lips and balls the bottom of her dress in her hands. She adjusts the headband to a new, different, and still excruciating angle. She holds court in my gall bladder, playing four corners in the asphalt of my large intestine. She, her, hers, anxiety smiles.  

It looks like me.