A Toast to My Anxiety

If I didn’t know better, you’d almost identify as a friend.

Someone always there, always thinking of you, someone that shows up when you’re all alone.

A familiar face, a timeless voice that I could recognize no matter how long it’s been.

If I didn’t know better, you and I would be like two peas in a pod.

Finishing each other’s sentences, spending all of our time together.

A lasting bond, one could say best friends forever.

But I do know better, and you are not a friend.

Simply an enemy with friendly tendencies.

A shadow of a friend with the body of an enemy.

I do know better.

Friends are honest, and you fill my mind with lies.

Your friendship is the fuel to the fires in my mind, the weight on my chest, the breaths I forget how to take.

I do know better.

They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

So let’s cheers to you.

To the friend I almost knew, to the enemy that is you.”