My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety

by Georgia Pritchett

Writing was really all I had ever cared about. But when we had to write a story for homework, I was given detention. The teacher said I had plagiarized. This was one of the words in the English language that I was yet to understand. But when I looked it up, I was furious. I considered not bothering doing my homework, but I loved writing. So I wrote and I took the detentions and I spent the time carving the word “plagiarism” into the desk.

discovered that if you’re a shy woman who doesn’t say much but smiles a lot, people project onto you who they think you are or who they want you to be. This makes going on dates doubly interesting/terrifying. I would not only be finding out who they were, I would be finding out who they had decided I was. And the problem was, however much I did or didn’t like them, I never liked their version of me.

Writing is the perfect job for an anxious person. You get to do most of it at home in your pajamas. It is utterly anonymous. Nobody knows what writers look like. Nobody knows their names. Other people literally talk on your behalf. You get to peep out at the world between the lines you’ve written.