Anxiety - Hooray! (It's ridiculous)

It's unfortunate, but American society is certainly fertile soil for producing anxiety, as it's safety nets are full of large biased holes, and the organizations that could do something about this are filled with other kinds of holes. 

I have both been a person who has no concept of anxiety and a person who has debilitating panic attacks. The former was when I was a child, had a strong support system, and felt as though there was always a safe place awaiting, a home. The second seemed to happen once this safety was removed; not just pieces of a home, but the entire floor beneath it fell out. This event seemed to traumatize me, like I think it does a lot of people, and now any time there is even the perception of a similar fallout, the anxiety comes flooding back until I remember to build my own floor. I wonder how many other people experience anxiety in this way, and how many consider it ridiculous? I mean, it is ridiculous, but it is often times out of our control. I know many people who experience this disorder in their own way, but I also know others who will never know the bizarre feeling of a spirit of worry swooping in and confiscating your body, while your gut is pushed to the other side of the universe. 

Right now it's like a swelling in my throat that slowly grows until I suffocate. This would make an excellent muse for a grunge song, but it makes for a shitty one when creating a syllabus. I can't organize an entire classroom and the learning process of fifty students if I can't even organize my own thoughts.I don't know why I am so petrified to teach my classes next semester. Maybe because it's only my second semester teaching and I've picked up yet another completely new class. Maybe it's the so-called "impostor" syndrome that a lot of teachers get, where I don't feel like I am a real teacher and have no place directing a classroom of students. Certainly there is the massive fear of failure; what happens if I walk in my first day and my students think that I am a complete idiot who has no idea what I am doing? Because, let's face it, it's only my second semester, so I don't! What am I doing? Ahhhh! 

   I keep having the dream that it's the first day of class, I'm completely unprepared, and the students scoff at the uselessness of whatever activity I am failing at getting them involved with. It causes an inner sadness that I don't know how to cope with. I don't want to feel this way anymore. I don't want to have this dream again. I relinquish my ownership of these thoughts and their power over me; get off, go somewhere else! Let me write my novel, relax, and plan my classes over a cup of coffee and some light conversation; that's what I love! How could I have turned something I love into something I hate, purely based on fear? It's ridiculous. It really is. 

Who knows? I don't know why it's here, but I know it's not welcome. I keep on kicking it out, and it keeps on showing up at the door. I must've given it the key years ago and I still haven't figured out how to change the locks. Maybe I'll make my permanent floor at the bottom, so I'll never have to worry about it falling out on me again.