i need to quell my anxiety. i've always been anxious as long as i can remember. i seem to chart the beginning to kindergarten when i was four, but it must have begun before, when i was born? or before? i may have been born with it. i used to quell it by reading into the night under covers with a flashlight so i wouldn't wake my brother in the twin bed next to me. but reading wasn't enough to quell my anxiety, it only works in books and the penumbra of books. alcoholic spirits didn't work, they only made my anxiety muted and abyssal, anxiously numb.