I suffer from anxiety. I didn’t know I was an anxious person until I was well into adulthood.  It’s my default state. For years, whirling thoughts have been my power generator, but this seems different from most other folks. I’ve always been viewed with suspicion, longsuffering, and irritation by a lot of other people. I’m hyper. I’m outspoken. I’m blunt. I’m loud. I take things too literally. I ask too many questions. I’m kinda...much. And even as a little kid I knew it. I knew I was weird, talked too much, and that the words and noises pouring out of my mouth in a cascade were drowning whatever empathy others might feel for me. I saw faces harden, eyes roll, smiles shrivel into white-lipped aggravation, yet still my words fountained out of me in an attempt to appease, amuse, or elicit something other than hatred or disinterest.

I learned to shut my mouth sometimes. I binged and purged on words, babbling nonstop some days, growing nonverbal on others. I learned to go within. Some speak of going within as a metaphor, but that’s not how it is for me. In times of silence or waiting, I close my eyes and look at the inside of my eyelids, marvelling at the hazy yellow-pink of sunlight through my skin. I press my hands against my ears and listen to the ka-chunk ka-chunk of my heartbeat, or to the gooshy sounds of myself swallowing, sound travelling from the back corners of my mouth and down my throat. I engage the tympanic membranes of my ears to hear roaring. I isolate different muscles of my body in a flex and release, flex and release, flex and release sequence. I listen to the tea-kettle screech of tinnitus. I press on my eyeballs and watch phosphenes float by. I hold a thermometer in my hand and will my temperature to change. I stare at the reflection of my eyelashes in the coke bottle lenses of my glasses. I count my steps in my mind, stare intently at the pores in my skin, and wiggle loose baby teeth with my tongue. I bang my head on my bedroom wall to experience the rhythm of sound. I bite my nails past the quick until blood wells up and I regretfully unclench my teeth and vow not to do it again. I do it again. I go within again and again. So long as I can do so, I can never be bored.

I was obsessed with words and sounds. I found words I liked and repeated them over and over again, enjoying the feel of them on my tongue, the way different sounds moved from throat to tongue to teeth to lips. I played with rhymes, and chanted as many rhyming words as I could think of or invent. I got into trouble for this when bad words arose during the litany.  I was told again and again not to say those words, so I practiced saying them to animals and trees instead of people. Geese don’t care when you rhyme duck with fuck. I realize now that I had hyperlexia.

My mother sewed most of my clothes, and by the time I was three, I could read well enough to pick out clothing patterns in my own size. I read everything I could, from instructions on toilet cleaner to the westerns and Regency romance novels strewn about the house. I didn’t always understand the words I was reading, but I read them nonetheless, and I collected words like some people collect stamps, filing them away for later use.

I had no friends in elementary school. I was far too weird for most kids. My friends were nonhuman. I played with chickens, pigs, dogs, cats, horses, goats, rabbits, and geese. I tracked down wildlife in the woods. I learned to mimic all sorts of birds. I understood how to communicate intentions with animals. People, however, I could not figure out. I rescued snakes and frogs from kids who would hurt them, not understanding why anyone would ever kill or injure another living creature for fun. I studied other children at school and tried to understand what it was that made them ok with one another, but not with me. I wanted to join in their conversations, to know what they were talking about, but they told me to go away. I had so many things I wanted to say, but no one wanted to hear them. I was never more lonely than when I was surrounded by people.

Words burgeoned within me, so thick I could see them. When anyone spoke, my imagination supplied closed captioning. I watched words float by like ticker tape, spoken words translated into text by my accommodating brain. Conversation was a comic book with word balloons, and when I showered and let the water pour onto my eyelids, I saw newspaper print that I couldn’t quite read.

I was supersaturated with words. Those words that wanted to spray like a fire hose, to tell stories, to share the joy of sounds, the flavours of words—those words had no place to go.  But then I began writing. The first story I ever wrote was when I was seven years old. I was in grade two, and my teacher did not like me. She regularly used me as a cautionary example of how not to do things, and often contrasted my colouring homework with Jennifer’s. Jennifer always chose the right colours and kept within the lines. My colours extended beyond the lines. Jennifer’s colouring books had bright yellow ducks in red boots carrying black umbrellas. My ducks weren’t yellow. They didn’t wear bright red boots. My ducks were prickly creatures made of purple and black scribbles, and though I tried to stay inside the lines, my exuberance was too huge to be contained.

When my teacher read the first story I ever wrote, I saw something in her face she had never before directed my way. I saw admiration. “This is good,” she said, and I marvelled that this teacher–who disliked me so very much and who had even beaten me with a leather strap–was moved by my words into admitting I was skillful at something. I learned that my words on paper were perhaps my best chance at communicating with other people.

I entered my first writing contest when I was in grade four and won it. I was published in a national magazine, and I received $100 and a big silver medal in a velvet case. The peanut butter stain on the velvet captures that triumphant moment when I held my prize aloft in grubby hands. I exulted in the realisation that people liked what I was writing. They liked it so much they even wanted other people to read it. I began writing for myself, as well. Not every story has to be shared.

I started collecting penpals when I was in grade five. I learned I was better at keeping human friends on paper than I was in person. I wrote letters to people all over the world, learning what they did for fun, and sharing my own thoughts and experiences. For the first time in my life, I was being included in the conversations.

I have never had a problem with generating writing, with pouring words out onto paper or computer screens. Perhaps it’s because of that anxiety which always simmers within me, keeping my mind bubbling and hot, albeit too fogged with steam to see everything clearly on occasion. When stew cooks on the stovetop, ingredients don’t stay in orderly lines. Mushrooms, potatoes, and carrots tumble around one another in delicious chaos, getting their flavours all over one another. This is my mind. Messy words and ideas caromb off one another within the stewpot of my skull.

I find it interesting that my hurlyburly of words, which irritate so many people, are described as lyrical and visceral once they hit the page rather than an eardrum.

Sometimes the anxiety grows too loud. The words circle within me in a cyclone and I am left sitting motionless in my chair, helpless to exorcise them. Agitation grows, though I look no different to myself in the mirror. My facial expression does not reveal the vortex inside me. There is only one thing at the forefront of my mind, and I don’t want to see it anymore.  How can I make it go away?

This is what it’s like when executive dysfunction takes over. I dwell on only one thought, and it swirls around and around in my mind like the grey scum atop a pot of boiling potatoes. The inside of my mouth feels like I just ate cold french fries. My chest is tight. My intrusive thought is all I can focus upon, even though there are so many things I need or want to do. If someone speaks to me, it’s readily apparent I’m not attentive. How can I be when anxiety has left me with nothing but a worry? How can I make myself answer my emails, clean my room, meet a deadline, or remember to eat when this unwanted thought takes up all of my attention and pushes everything else far below the surface?

In times like these, online writing groups help me. Writing sessions which supply prompts for free-writing let me exorcise the demons and get to other ideas roiling beneath the surface.  Sometimes having someone else give me a word or a phrase to write about is enough to dispel the rumination and get my mind simmering merrily again. It means I can release the tension in my chest, relax the deathgrip of my jaw, and know I’ve accomplished something, in spite of it all. I am grateful for my ability to write and create. It’s not a cure for my anxiety, but it is an excellent way of soothing it.

Previously appeared in the now-defunct, print-only Open Minds Quarterly in the Autumn of 2023.