Anxiety Unbearable Poem by Margaret Alice

I think it’s stress, the reason I can’t sleep,
it doesn’t matter what I eat, or when I go
to bed, if I fall asleep at all, sooner or later
I’m wide awake and sleep takes flight, I’m
so tired I don’t want to sit upright, the only
explanation for this exhausting occurrence
is unconscious stress about returning to the
open-plan office, repeating the experience
of last year, fighting for my sanity in a chaotic,
stressful situation, the specter’s looming larger
every day, John Maxwell’s book on Leadership
points out that problems reveal our inner nature;
school where we were forced to sit in class was
bad enough, but sitting in a sea of restless, noisy
colleagues is worse than anything I’ve known
before; with my senses raw, trying to see it as a
form of persecution, a challenge to be overcome,
to meet it with endurance, my conscious mind is
trying while my subconscious is shriveling up in
unmitigated fear and angst, anxiety is making
life unbearable…