#sander sides

Once he had made himself known, Anxiety didn’t stop making himself known. Making himself known, actually, at quite possibly the worst times. Like the middle of the night.

Thomas had been having a not-so-great day. It all started when he got out of his car right as it started to rain. No, not just rain. Down-pour. And, yes, it gets worse—he tried flirting with he very cute barista (while still soaking wet from the aforementioned rain) and ended the whole thing with the awful ‘you too’ to the ‘enjoy your coffee’. For the rest of the day, Thomas just couldn’t get rid of the thought of how embarrassing that whole ordeal was. Frankly, it ruined his afternoon, too.

By night, Thomas was dry and cozy in his bed. A fine way to end the day, all things considered. The now-storm outside still reigned on, though it wasn’t too bad. If anything, it was kind of nice to have some noise. That was, until one terrible bright and terribly loud lightning strike lit up Thomas’s room where, out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw a figure standing there. Thomas jolted up with a barely muffled screech only to hear an all too familiar dark, throaty chuckle.

“Oh my God, you’re so easily spooked,” Anxiety stepped into full view, laughing underneath his hand.

“You’re lurking! You—you’re trying to spook me!” Thomas clutched his chest and took in a deep breath. His heart was racing so hard he could feel it in his throat.

“Duh. I just didn’t think it’s be so easy. I have so many tricks up my sleeve and didn’t even have to use any of them.”

Thomas didn’t even want to ask what the ‘tricks’ were.

“That’s not even fair. You’re the one that would make me feel scared anyways!”

“And?” Anxiety sneered.

Thomas sighed. “Fine, you got me, you scared me. Is there any reason you’re still hanging around?”

Thomas finally laid back down and covered his face with his arm. Maybe if he stopped looking at Anxiety he would be gone the next time he looked.

“Lucky for you, I’m kinda thinking now would actually be the perfect time to have a little chat about today. Ehh, and maybe some other stuff,” Anxiety said.

“Surely you know this is probably the worst time to talk. It’s like, midnight,” Thomas grumbled.

“First of all, it’s not anywhere close to midnight anymore. And second, I actually think this is the perfect time. I’m pretty sure you were already awake with no intention of going to bed anytime soon.”

Thomas could hear Anxiety smirk at him, and the worst part is that he was right. Thomas had been flipping between Twitter and Tumblr for the past… Thomas checked his phone. Gosh, it was already 2:30? Though, if he was being honest, Anxiety probably wasn’t above waking Thomas up from sleep just to harass him.

“Shut up,” Thomas groaned.

“Ohhh, what a great, new, revolutionary idea! I’ve never even thought about just shutting up.”

“You should try it sometime,” Thomas bit back.

“Nice try,” Anxiety said.

Thomas squeezed his eyes tighter underneath his arm. If he just ignored Anxiety, he would get bored and go away. Go away and bother someone else.

“So, let’s do some good ol’ self reflection!” Anxiety put on a fake cheery voice and Thomas felt the bed sink down as Anxiety sat down.

Huh. Turns out they do have some tangibility.

“You really humiliated yourself there earlier. I mean, what kind of idiot says ‘you too’ to the barista? Not only embarrassing, but its fuckin’ clichè, too. You’re the poster boy for awkward and cringey, you know that, right? And not even in a charmingly-cute-awkward-adorable way. Just in a weird way.”

Thomas finally opened his eyes to see Anxiety looking down at him with a fake-mocking look of pity on his face.

“Come on, it wasn’t even that bad,” Thomas said.

“It was that bad, actually. Most of your flirting attempts are that bad. Remind me Thomas, how long have you been single?”

Ouch. Thomas pursed his lips. It had been a … little while, but that wasn’t because of this one bad experience! But…if he had bad on top of bad on top of bad…

“That’s not really relevant,” Thomas muttered out half-heartedly.

“Lets just say its not relevant, just for fun. You’re just flirting with a questionably-at-best gay barista for fun and as a…what, masochistic humiliation ritual? It’s not like you’ve gotten very far with any of your shots recently. You’d think with practice you’d get better, but clearly that’s not working. So, tell me again how you being single isn’t relevant to this conversations?”

“Why are you harping on this right now?” Thomas groaned.

“Did you forget who you’re talking to?”

It was so, so much worse to hear all of one’s anxious thoughts said out loud back to you, not just sitting in your head. These were the kinds of thoughts that would normally keep him up at night anyways, but now these thoughts were real and tangible.

“But you’re real. Can’t you just go? Can’t I reason with you or something? I’m just—I can think about this stuff without you hanging around.”

“We already tried the ‘Oh Anxiety, go away, I don’t like you’ and that didn’t work. Plus, I’m letting you up easy right now. You’re not the only one who’s tired.”

“This is going easy on me? You’re sitting here berating me! How is this even being anxious? It’s just being mean!” Thomas said, exasperated.

“You’re falling behind with everyone you know on finding someone, you know that right? And it’ll always just be so much harder for you since you’re gay. You might never find someone, or you might make the wrong choice and get hate crimed. The world’s not getting any better for you.”

“But—”

“You live alone, too. You have your friends, sure, but what if something happened to you? How long would it take for someone to find you? If you’re alone—”

“Alright! I get it! Please, stop,” Thomas said, the visceral vision of that horrible scenario flashing in his head.

“Mhm, mhm. That’s what I thought.” Anxiety said. He stared at Thomas, his eyes (wait, were they purple?) boring down at him.

Thomas hated this. He hated Anxiety. No, no. Hate was mean, especially for one of his sides, for a part of himself. Thomas didn’t hate himself, after all. But God, Anxiety made it so hard. So, so hard. Why did he have to be so mean and so creepy?

“I’m bored,” Anxiety suddenly said.

“Huh?” Thomas didn’t expect Anxiety to give up so quickly.

“What, did you want me to stay?” Anxiety threatened.

“No, no,” Thomas quickly replied. He really very much did not want to imply that Anxiety should overstay his already overstayed welcome.

“Right, then. ‘M out,” Anxiety disappeared into the shadows, but Thomas’ half-asleep brain wasn’t convinced Anxiety was actually gone for a long while. Thomas tossed and turned in bed until he finally believed Anxiety wasn’t going to come back and haunt him before finally falling asleep.

***

“Good morning Thomas,” Logic sat on Thomas’ couch with a perfectly upright posture that couldn’t possibly be comfortable and a book in his hand. It was a comically generic-looking textbook for something he couldn’t quite figure out. It might have been something like psychology. Fitting, given his visit from Anxiety the previous night definitely had him thinking about anxiety as a concept.

“Mornin’,” Thomas grumbled through the groggy haze he fought (and failed) so hard to push through.

Logic shopped his book shut and set it down on the couch, where it promptly stopped existing. “You don’t seem much in your usual high spirits. I already know your sleep schedule is certainly,” his nose scrunched, “less than ideal. However, you do seem overly perturbed.”

Perturbed he was. It was hard to keep things from the little people who live in your head.

“Anxiety dropped me a visit last night when I was trying to go to sleep,” Thomas said.

Logic raised a skeptical brow. Thomas grimaced at Logic’s insistence of telling him exactly what happened.

“Well, when I was on my phone in bed. Still, he's so much scarier in the middle of the night than he is during the day.”

“You have often found your unpleasant and anxious thoughts become amplified in the evening, often while you try to sleep and especially as your many sleepless nights start to pile up on you. I’m sure if your late night visit from Anxiety truly distressed you, this might be the figurative fire under you to motivate a change in your lifestyle.”

That wasn’t quite the kind of response Thomas was looking for, but going to his logic for comfort wasn’t ever going to work out the way he wanted it to.

“Yeah, I guess. Going to bed at 10 isn’t actually going to make Anxiety go away, though.”

Thomas made it into his kitchen for his morning coffee. No awkward flirting with a barista this time.

“Of course not. That’s a ridiculous notion that your Anxiety would simply go away. A little bit of fear is quite healthy. Imagine the danger you would, intentionally or not, find yourself in had you no amount of caution.” Logic chuckled at the surely ridiculous scenario he was imagining. Like Thomas not looking both ways before crossing the street or whatever terrible scenario only Logic would find incredibly dangerous.

“I get that, but he doesn’t need to be so—”

“Scary?”

Thomas jumped, Anxiety now perched on the counter. He was creeping (ha.) up on the “most-dramatic-entrances” list Thomas just now created in his head. Second only to Creativity.

“Yes! If you weren’t so scary I wouldn’t be so scared,” Thomas drew his words out, “of you!”

“You wouldn’t be so inclined to listen to me if I wasn’t.” Anxiety retorted.

“That's not true! I take Logic and Morality and Creativity’s advice and they’re not trying to scare me!”

Thomas didn’t understand why one of his own sides would be so mean to him. He wasn’t a mean person; why would any part of him be?

“They don’t have to tell you the bad stuff. They won’t, at least.” Anxiety shot a glare at Logic.

“To come to Anxiety’s defense on the matter—” Logic started.

“What??” Thomas said.

“Eugh, please don’t,” Anxiety said.

Logic sighed, the only display of annoyance on his otherwise stoic face. “Even before your awareness of us and, I imagine, even before we existed to you as physical beings, you perceive your anxious and of then unpleasant thoughts as a negative voice in your head. One that is often, as you put it, mean. It only makes sense that the personification of Anxiety would be just as negative and unfriendly to you.”

That made sense, but it still didn’t make it feel any better.

“Oh my god, how did you manage to make me sound so boring?” Anxiety groaned and pushed himself off the counter.

“None of this is boring, Anxiety. Quite the contrary. This is all in an attempt to explain you to Thomas in a palatable way. Our existence as a personification of Thomas’ mental state and personality is fascinating, and as we appear to be the only known case of anything of the sort. How you could ever think this boring I will never understand.”

Anxiety mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a string of expletives as he quite literally faded out of the room through the shadows of Thomas’ hallway.

“Well, thanks, Logic,” Thomas said.

His mouth twitched into a small smile, one of few expressions Logic ever makes.

“The best way to stave off your excessive worry is to present you with truth and facts,” Logic said

Thomas smiled and grabbed his coffee, finally done, and glanced over at the spot where Anxiety stood just a few seconds ago. He would really just have to get used to Anxiety being around, then. Just as he had to get used to his other three sides, though he feared it would be a much more difficult road to go down.

Setting down his coffee on the table, Thomas opened up his laptop, ignoring Logic’s glance that he was pretty sure meant to say that he should eat and let himself wake up before getting on his laptop.

“I’m doing work,” Thomas muttered in response to Logic’s glance.