Liz Brown

*TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains stories about living with anxiety

Next to my house is a two-story duplex. Living in the upstairs portion are a woman and a bunch of cats. Now that I’ve set the scene, let’s get down to business: my neighbor has a problem—she takes in stray cats. At first glance, this sounds empathetic and caring. But when you begin estimating the cats-to-square-footage ratio—and I doubt they’ve all had shots or been properly looked at before she takes them in—it takes a rather concerning turn.

I tend to be judgmental towards her (albeit good-intentioned) gateway-drug-level of animalhording, but the truth is: I let in stray cats, too. They wander in, uninvited and unannounced, sometimes with damp and matted fur, and I let them stay. I feed them. I think about them often. I nurse them into health and let them feel like they belong here. They sit on top of my lungs, bellies heavy and swollen, teeth and claws sinking into my tender organs. My cats’ names are Fear and Anxiety.

Being an independent woman, I never planned on having pets. Between my landlord’s high pet fee and my spontaneous traveling lifestyle, it wasn’t in the cards—or so I thought. That being the case, I never intended to have these cats, let alone to keep them or make them feel like this is their new home.

But Anxiety, the door-to-door salesman of tight lungs and spiraling thoughts, never comes at a convenient time. He rings the doorbell during dinner or while I’m on the phone—and the cats named after him have a similarly inconveniencing schedule.

Equally unpredictable little moments prop open the door for these cats to come in. A couple weeks ago, in line for coffee, I felt claws tighten in my lungs. Oh, the cats are back. A couple days ago, my pants bit into my waist while I drove and the sunshine uncomfortably warmed my left side next to the window. I felt pinched and small and large and anxious and by the time I identified that last symptom, I knew that the cats had snuck into my car. They’re very sneaky, my cats. But here’s the thing: they’re not mine and I need to let them go.

Continually, I make the horrormovie-novice mistake of opening the door to them. There’s a time for hospitality, but at the expense of your mental health isn’t one of them. You can’t breathe with claws in your lungs.

Last September in Portland, I walked by a dinner-and-movie theatre (if you live there, I’m sure you know the place) and saw a sign for a movie about welcoming house guests who turn out to be cannibals (again, if you’ve seen it, you know).

Anxiety is that cannibal. Or a vampire, accidentally invited in under the guise of being a “regular human.” And suddenly you’re being bitten or eaten. Really pleasant stuff. But not unlike what those cats to do the inside of my lungs: as they begin to settle in, I’ll feel like a hollow October pumpkin, being carved out and caved in from the inside, seeds falling out of my mouth like distorted what-ifs become words.

But enough about the cats. You see, they’re not mine and I don’t have to be defined by what creatures wander into my soul or into my home. Sometimes, however, our houses become infested. Last fall, hundreds of mice made their home in my attic, becoming comfortable enough to host late night parties upstairs, to snack in my pantry, and to skitter across my living room; one night I found one in my bed and the next day an exterminator was called. Sometimes the creatures in our homes and in our souls are too deeply settled in for us to exterminate them on our own. We all need people to come beside us, to put their hands around our arms and under our lungs and to shoulder our pain. We need people to cradle the ache in our lungs like mothers we may never have had. And to tell us that this isn’t our name and that we are destined for things far beyond this tide, like a father teaching his child how to swim.

On a trip to Chicago, my boyfriend and I stopped at a vintage shop, lured in by the shelves of old boots. As soon as we entered, the flustered shop owner explained that he had rescued an injured pigeon and needed help feeding it. Minutes later, my boyfriend was feeding an infant bird with a child’s medicine dropper, as the owner held the creature’s mouth open. Maybe we need people like that, too: both caring strangers and gentle confidantes. Maybe we don’t only need our punctured lungs cradled, but our whole selves. And maybe sometimes we need someone else to drop truth onto our tongues, when we are too fragile to reach for it ourselves. My tendency is to be selfsufficient, to hold my weaknesses inside, to internalize and to hope I can muster enough strength to change. But I’m learning it’s okay to be fragile sometimes. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to need truth through a dropper as you re-learn how the words feel on your tongue.

Some mornings it feels like a fight, and it feels even counterintuitive to fight for something like peace. While anxiety makes its home in my lungs, I can feel peace residing vividly behind my cheekbones. But I don’t want peace only behind my cheekbones—I want peace to trickle down through those tense cords of my throat and drip into my ringing lungs and through the holes the cats ripped into my organs and maybe when liquid peace hits those open caverns, something like music will ring out and at the end of the day, I just want to live a good song. But the beautiful thing is when the water starts echoing through my lungs and your cradling hands and through his gentle words, we’re more than a song. As we cradle each other, we are an anthem.