Hanging Clouds

Samantha Hill

Sometimes you feel like you’re drowning in nothing. There is no threat, no possible harm, yet you’re drowning. It’s that dark cloud that hangs above your head, the fear that pulls at the hairs on the back of your neck, tugs at your emotions, and leaves you wondering, how do I fix this. Here’s the funny thing, you can’t. At least not right away. That pit in your stomach takes practice to shrink. The voice in your head takes even longer to wrestle the megaphone away from. 

Everyone has this, at least in one moment in their life. Others cannot control it, can’t tame it like a dog. For some, the cloud towering above them doesn’t go away. It hangs, heavy and foreboding like a bad omen. It tells you that something bad is going to happen, yet it never seems to tell you exactly what. That cloud sends droplets of worry down on you, building like a thunderstorm that has just begun. That’s how it begins, the cloud follows you, harassing you throughout the day, and only ceases when you close your eyes at night. When you find that umbrella, the one thing that shields you from it, you hold onto it with all you have. Defeated, the cloud floats away, finally, you’re free. 

That’s when it hits you. The feeling of that pit deepening in your stomach. It seems to grow and grow, neverending and always present. It doesn’t stop, not until you work to stop it, to tame it. Day in, day out, the pit is present, dark and foreboding. Yet with time, you feel it shrink and slowly, that pit becomes a well. Finally there is an ending in sight, a bottom to the pit, something, anything, to prevent it from growing. It begins to fill with crisp, clean water, ready for drinking. It fills with hopes and dreams ready for pursuing and banishes the worries of the deep, dark pit that once stood there. 

Yet now there’s a voice, yelling into the well, tainting its beauty. It’s taken hope hostage, pulled it deep into the darkness it has brought back to the well. It grabs hold of a megaphone, shouting its demands into the sky, without a care how loud it is. Anxiety doesn’t play by the rules, it never has. That’s what makes it so hard to beat, in the chess match that is life. It always has you in checkmate, until you take the megaphone away from that voice. Once the megaphone is gone, it’s no longer a brave soldier on its way to war with your emotions. It has become defenseless. No megaphone, no deep pit, and the rain is constantly shooed away by sunshine. Anxiety has become a recluse, trapped in its own space, not to be seen again.