☆Spinter Swerve☆

Anxiety

anxious (adj.) - 1620s, "greatly troubled by uncertainties," from Latin anxius "solicitous, uneasy, troubled in mind" (also "causing anxiety, troublesome"), from angere, anguere "to choke, squeeze," figuratively "to torment, cause distress" (from PIE root *angh- "tight, painfully constricted, painful").

I learned the weather by your footsteps,

how the floorboards spoke before you did,

how silence could mean safety

or the eye of something breaking.

I kept maps in my chest,

charting storms no one else could see—

the wrathful darkness in your voice,

the beer set down too hard,

the way night could tilt without warning.

I became small in the right ways,

invisible when needed,

useful when called.

A careful architect of calm,

stacking peace like fragile dishes

no one must hear me drop.

My needs—

I folded them into corners,

tucked them behind apologies

that weren’t mine to carry.

I learned that love

was something you earned

by not being too much.

So I became less.

And more.

Hyper-aware, hyper-ready,

a nervous system tuned

like a wire stretched thin

between disaster and control

and implodes internally.

Now I walk through quiet rooms

and still listen for echoes—

for something that isn’t there

but never really left.

They call it anxiety.

They call it patterns, disorders, names—

but I know it as muscle memory:

the body remembering

what the mind survived.

And still, somewhere beneath it,

there is a child

who thought peace was their responsibility,

who believed love could be stabilized

if they just tried harder.

I am learning now—

slowly, imperfectly—

that I can set the glass down loudly,

that I can need without apology,

that storms can pass

without me becoming the sky.

I learned the shape of dread

by watching the people I loved

become strangers

without leaving the house.

So I made myself useful.

I made myself quiet.

I became the child who vanished

before anyone could remember

to look for me.

I carried the atmosphere.

I read faces like omens.

I could taste the shift in a room

before a single word was spoken.

This is what survival looked like:

flinching before the strike,

smiling before the blow,

hearing danger in kindness

and calling it intuition.

Now I am older

and the past still lives in my nerves.

It wakes inside me as vigilance,

as compulsive checking,

as sorrow without a funeral,

as a mind that cannot stop

preparing for catastrophe.

I was taught that love

arrives with a storm behind it.

That peace is temporary.

That need is a burden.

That the self is safest

when it is barely there.

So I became a room with no light in it.

A house with all its windows covered.

A body trained to disappear

before grief could find it.

And still, the child in me

keeps listening

Do what feels true to your heart,

not what asks to be noticed.

Validation is loud for a moment—

all applause and flicker,

a quick spark that feels like meaning

until it fades back into silence.

But what’s real doesn’t need to announce itself.

It’s the quiet choices.

The ones made when no one is watching.

When there’s no audience to win over,

no need to prove anything.

Those moments don’t fade the same way.

They settle in you—

steady, simple, lasting.

Not everything has to be seen

to matter.

And not everything that’s seen

stays meaningful.

So follow what aligns.

What feels honest.

What feels like you

when everything else gets stripped away.

That’s the part that stays.

=======

Your reflections already carry the pulse of a poem. I shaped them into something lyrical, cohesive, and centered on integration, recovery, self-compassion, and becoming.

Writing

I am learning not merely to survive, but to go through.

For years I lived as weather-worn terrain, bracing for storms before clouds appeared, mistaking vigilance for safety, mistaking exhaustion for strength.

Now joy arrives, and sometimes I greet it with suspicion, as though silence itself were a warning. Yet I am learning to remain. To sit in the quiet room. To trust that not every stillness conceals a fall.

I grieve the years I could not access myself. The years anxiety occupied the doorway, collecting tolls from every dream, every possibility, every moment of simple presence.

But grief is no longer my prison. It is part of the passage.

I feel creative growth blossoming. A clearing. A widening field. A place where I can finally sit beside myself without judgment, without the relentless editor crossing out every imperfect line.

I am deciding to begin.

To be lucid. To hold space for my own becoming. To welcome the company I keep, and the company of my own soul.

The wave of abundance is here, but abundance is not merely wealth. It is a job that sustains me. A workplace where I feel supported. A conversation handled with greater care. A boundary honored. A breath taken before reaction. A shower at night that washes away the static of the day.

I am learning that self-care is not an escape from life. It is participation in it.

My inner critic still arrives, red pen in hand, editing

Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has

all power—That One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked

His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a Program of Recovery:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

TO embark on recovery is a courageous act, full of my honesty with myself and commitment to my worth and future, with action and faith...

Aligning...

o what feels true to your heart,

not what asks to be noticed.

Validation is loud for a moment—

all applause and flicker,

a quick spark that feels like meaning

until it fades back into silence.

But what’s real doesn’t need to announce itself.

It’s the quiet choices.

The ones made when no one is watching.

When there’s no audience to win over,

no need to prove anything.

Those moments don’t fade the same way.

They settle in you—

steady, simple, lasting.

Not everything has to be seen

to matter.

And not everything that’s seen

stays meaningful.

So follow what aligns.

What feels honest.

What feels like you

when everything else gets stripped away.