Good Things Make Me Anxious.
Good things make me anxious.
They feel like little birds landing on my shoulder, beautiful, soft, and incredibly light. And I can never shake the feeling that the moment I breathe in too deeply, they’ll flutter away. So I hold my breath… for as long as I can. I grip the goodness too tightly, until it bruises under the strength of my anxiety and fear. I try to earn it, to deserve it, to bargain with the universe so it stays. I do good things, hoping that maybe this time, I’ll be allowed to keep what I love.
But even in the warmth of joy, I mourn. I mourn in advance. I say goodbyes into the arms of beginnings. Because I’ve seen the way good things vanish. I’ve watched laughter curdle into silence. I’ve felt love dissolve in someone’s absence. So, when something kind or soft or bright finds me, I flinch. I brace. I mourn.
And sometimes, I let go too soon. I release the good before it can truly transform me. Before it can make a home in me. Because what if it leaves anyway? What if it teaches me a new kind of light, only to disappear and leave me in darkness that feels even deeper than before?
It’s such a strange thing, to be afraid of healing. To ache for something while pushing it away. I want good things to stay.
But maybe some good things are just meant to be held gently, with both hands, for as long as they’ll let you.
More Posts from Kingoflowqualitypics and Others
Arthur Adams
I don’t know if I want to be known by you
So I started reading this essay on Aeon, only 14 pages, I thought. Easy. I’ll breeze through it and read another one (trying to make it a habit to read more essays).
I’m on page 3 and completely spiraling (in the best way).
It’s about Plato, love, and beauty… specifically Diotima’s “ladder of love” from the Symposium. Basically, the idea is that what we think of as love (like being into someone’s looks or charm or whatever) is actually just the lowest rung of a bigger, higher journey. What we’re really in love with isn’t their body, it’s the beauty that their body reflects?
And at first I was like… I get it but I also don’t? But then it i understood. We’re not just drawn to a person’s hands or eyes or smile, we’re pulled toward something those things point to. Something more abstract. We love not just their kindness, for example, we start to love kindness Itself. And once you realize that, it’s like your love detaches from just one person and expands outward… you start seeing beauty everywhere, in everyone.
And then I started thinking, what if this whole “ladder of love” is also a metaphor for faith?
As someone that was brought up Christian, even when I have doubted the existence of God, I kinda never really stopped loving what “God” represents: compassion, forgiveness, honesty, gentleness. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not about whether we can prove the source. It’s about the fact that we’re drawn to it. The beauty of that source?
That longing for the good, the beautiful, the meaningful maybe that’s what’s divine in us.
It’s like a person standing in sunlight and the sun is casting their shadow on the ground. We fall in love with the shadow, the body, the charm, the vibe but what we’re really responding to is the light behind it. The source. The thing we can’t touch, but feel. Does this make sense omg..
So yeah, this is only three pages into the essay. Gonna nap.
What a pathetic little thing!
my mutual when they found out I’m British 🙁😔
There’s nothing I hate more than people who cannot take rejection without being rude to you like?? are you only happy when you get your way? ew. sorry life doesn’t work like that.
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