My nerves spilled and scattered on the pavement

I couldn’t gather them as I trudged and dragged my exhaustion to class that day

Last October

I carried what I could of last night’s sleep, maybe 3 hours, and the anxiety, a monster growing in the pit of my stomach drowning me till the world seemed like a blurry smudge painting

My last year of college came to me like a ton of bricks delivered to my front doorstep

My life turned into a war since I started to worry

Every

Single

Moment

Of

Every

Single

Day

My perfectionist tendencies paired with the thoughts of deadlines…no motivation…and a fear of tomorrow.  It made a nice soup ready for panic, don’t you think?

I stirred myself daily but still seemed to make it to every class, do every assignment, and manage a research project

That’s how I was last year

I sat in a office with a woman I told myself to maybe once a week hoping that my fear of living will transform into something else 

That’s how I was last year

When I reminisce and think back, I feel how I felt, that numb yet nervous feeling

I can still feel it there, lingering 

Last year, I didn’t want to wake up to the sun rising and I didn’t triumph for completing 3 years of college

Instead…

I dreaded the thought of every day coming, long days turning into long nights, a hungry stomach, and the quarantine I built around my sanity

That was last year

I don’t know how I seemed to make it a whole year later though 

In the midst of the strains and labor pains of reality, I managed to give birth to a project

This project spiraled in me October of 2015 until it was born

I named her SparklyWarTanks

I made her to fight back 

To win the war

To let my sanity free

Every time I wrote something I saved myself and I took another ingredient out of the soup 

I typed, pounded my fingers on my keyboard, to explain the motive for the birth of something new in me

I wanted to save another woman’s life while saving my own too

I wanted to burst out and say:

“Take care of yourself, take care of your mind, and your body!”

“You are important and you matter.”

“You are powerful and worthy, and beautiful.  You don’t need anyone to tell you.”

Of course those were messages I needed someone to tell me, but instead I became the billboard

The more I wrote, the more I felt the walls crumbling, the walls crowding and containing my sanity were falling

I found the key to the cage of my anxiety which surrounded my quarantined sanity

In october of 2016, grown into an adult, SparklyWarTanks evolved into a vision, into a foundation for women empowerment and mental health, one project exploded into a space, a place, a sanctuary to be safe

My anxiety transformed its face into the partner of ideas and the employer of a plan, it turned into passion.
So as I write, I write to the woman who hates herself and to the one with depression, I write to the woman with the eating disorder and to the ones living on the streets, I’m writing to the ones going through a midlife crisis and self-realization, I write to the mother and to the survivor, I write to the women who hurt and the ones who are stressed, I write to the powerful women and the ones making a difference, I write to the lawyers, and doctors, and writers, and motivators, and to our future

I write to support our next generation of women

That we stand up for ourselves and never hold our sanity hostage

That we declare our independence from expectation and perfectionism

That we defend ourselves and fight for our will to wake up peacefully and unafraid

If I could sum up how I’ve changed from last year to this year, I would simply say

I let my sanity free