By Kathleen Lynch, Staff Writer
The words kept echoing in my head, “My anxiety does not control me. My anxiety does not control me…” and yet, I couldn’t help but think maybe it does.
The scratching of pencils, the soft whispers of those around me, the tapping of a foot, the crack in my desk, the problem on my paper, each weighing down on my mind. Block out one thing and the next jumps out at you as if you were in a haunted house and the scarers get paid for every scream and double for every tear. You know they’ve already made a month’s living just from five minutes with you, but deep down it doesn’t matter. Nothing does. All thats left is a gaping hole where all your reason used to be. A gaping hole, a circle like the ones you draw on your paper to keep you calm. A circle that keeps going on and on without end. A circle that gets wider with every shaky breath and every nervous tap. Now the haunted house is a circle, going round and round in the maze that has only one exit. You keep seeing the same things, the same turns, but none of it looks familiar. It’s as if your brain has chosen to forget everything up to the present image of blurred hedges as you race toward the finish line that isn’t really there. There is no winning. There is no losing, only playing the game until there is nothing left. Now the scarers are back looking to make next month’s living too. This time it only takes two minutes. The tears stream down your face and your mind is screaming to be set free. Each and every insecurity holding you hostage, bound by chains deep inside this nightmare of a house. The key is in sight but just out of reach. All there is to do is stare at the flickering light suspended a few inches below and slightly off center of the slanted ceiling. The opposite wall crumbles, burying you in three stories worth of brick and cement. The air is sharply cut off as the bricks pile up, and the world fades away, until all that’s left is darkness.
When your eyes finally reopen, the light still flickers and the ceiling still holds. The scarers stand in a half circle facing you, staring. There are no whites in their eyes, but only solid circle of darkness that sucks you in, spiraling deeper and deeper into the depths of your nightmare until you’re stuck. You can’t see back the way you came. It’s like you’re in a maze, within a maze, within a haunted house, within a nightmare, within a test. You’re so dizzy now you can’t see straight and you’re stumbling around just like the skeletons surrounding you. You’ve fallen down and you’re either too weak or too weighed down to push yourself back up. So you lie there until the screaming fades away, and you open your eyes.
The flickering light is replaced by a timer in the center of the board counting down till the end of the test. The stumbling skeletons are replaced by your peers around you, furiously scratching out answers to the math problems that lay before you. The scarers are replaced by the teacher typing away on a computer in the corner of the room. The haunted house is replaced by the classroom, within a school, within a fatal system that no one seems to change. The nightmare isn’t replaced. It’s only altered into something that is somehow much more terrifying. As the clock reaches two minutes, you look down at the last problem on your test and you repeat once more, “My anxiety does not control me. My anxiety does not control me.” And this time I didn’t let it.