Overthinking and Overfeeling

Just stop it, kid

Stop thinking about it;

Stop fantasizing

About the trauma

Don’t let it

Get in ur head;

It’s all going to

Be okay

It’s all going to be fine

Just put one foot

In front of the other

And about it;

Don’t think twice.

As if I can control that;

As if I have a say

On the yays, the nays

And the inner workings of my brain—I don’t.

I’m sorry

I cannot quit

Thinking about it

Until it is dealt with!

I can no longer eat

All I want to do is sleep

I am held restless by fits

And pulses of anxiety

The world is spinning

The ground is moving

I was stuck in a deadlock

Now I’m caught in a whirlwind

All in the span of

A mere five minutes;

My emotions fluctuate

Without preamble—

I am left unaware as my mental state crumples

Into shambles;

I write about joy after drowning in my pain

I feel depthless despair while laughing myself insane—

I fight the worst parts of myself, too, refusing to resign my life to a depressive loop

But do not tell me to

Quit thinking about it

For were it truly so simple, would I even be in this

Predicament?

Look no further

Than my hands, nails like claws, cuticles marred, marked and scarred

By the teeth that needed to bite and bite until I bled instead of screamed or cried—

Look no further

Than these words, poignantly painful, penning the hurt

As I attempt to leash my anguish and stitch it into verse—

I often wonder if my overactive brain is more a blessing or a curse

But it is inseparable from my writing, so I’m inclined to say the desolation is worth

Something;

Even if sometimes it feels as if it costs me everything—and suddenly

I am a husk

And suddenly

I am numb.

Even as I float through the abyss of numbness, I feel thoughts creeping, for my anxiety persists—

My tired mind is still warring

My stiff upper lip

Is seconds from loosening and my eyes are precious moments

From pouring—I feel the floodgates once again opening

Numbness never lasted long for me, my prefrontal cortex has always specialized in agony—once more I’m drowning, once more I cannot breathe—

No food.

Too much sleep.

Emotional breakdown.

Repeat.

But

Just stop worrying about it, kid.

Tonight, I opened my famed notes app and found a poem I wrote in 2019 as a very depressed and anxious sixteen-year-old girl. I open old notes often, just to see how much I’ve grown emotionally and as a writer, but upon rereading this particular poem, all I could think of was how I still felt like that overwhelmed, exhaustedly desolate teenager. Perhaps it’s been the cold weather, perhaps it's been the short days, perhaps it's been the time away from home or even the impending finals craze, but I find my easy demeanor slipping, and the exhaustion in its wake, creeping. 

So, channeling the dual anguish of my past and present self, I did what any highly introspective, slightly self-destructive person would do: I immersed myself into all the feelings I’d been shutting off for the past week, and regurgitated them into this poem. A seemingly far cry from my last poem, which was about the power of gratitude, I chose to share this one this week because mental health is important. Colby is a wonderful campus, and I love and appreciate how kind and happy everyone here seems to be—but sometimes it's daunting. Sometimes, it appears as if “happy” is how everyone always is, and how everyone always should be, but that construct is flawed at its core, and will forever remain a fallacy. 

Pain is real. Anxiety is real. Depression is real. There is always a silver lining, but sometimes the light we so desperately seek is nothing more than a dwindling candle, and sometimes looking for the brighter side is more than our mental states can handle–and that is okay. The uglier feelings are valid, too. They deserve a voice, too. My nineteen-year-old self realizes, years later, that no matter how much my writing improves or how old I get, I will always carry these somber feelings. They are part of being human. They don’t dominate forever, and things do always get better, but that doesn’t make them any less real, and I think that that is important to remember. Let yourself feel the ugly things. Feeling pain and sadness does not make one ungrateful; it just makes them human.

~ Maaheen Shaikh `25