2017 in three words

Fear. Anxiety. Courage.

That sums up 2017. With 29 days left to the last month of the year, these three words still hold true. Fear. Anxiety. Courage.

The absurdity of the past week was but an exclamation point to an absurd year. The roller-coaster ride of the past week has been but one of many similar rides, with too many extreme crests and troughs it's nauseating.

You look at this picture and you see a confident woman travelling alone halfway across the world, someone who was just too happy to have made it to the home of one of her favorite authors. But what you don't see is the Xanax in her bag, prescribed by her doctor to battle panic attacks, the same panic attacks that landed her in the emergency room twice in one month. And you don't see how, two hours before she took this picture, she was a huge mess, hyperventilating, shaking, near tears, while halfway across the globe, her partner was urging her to step out of the hotel room and find distraction outside. Neither do you see how, later that day, while alone in a foreign airport, sweating in 6-degree weather, she was fighting hard not to let the darkness engulf her.


But - no matter how I'm feeling - I keep going forward. I refuse to let fear rule my life. My anxiety is but a part of me that I have to deal with; it doesn't define me and it definitely isn't me.

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