Anxiety: We worry. A gallery of contributors count the ways.

The series is featuring occasional works of fiction. This is one.



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When the world ends, you and the handful of other survivors are going to fight each other for what’s left. There’s going to be a little food and potable water, and a bit of inhabitable space. Maybe people speak the same language, or maybe they don’t, but words don’t matter anymore. It matters who is lucky and cunning and ambitious and strong. People eat things that you, here and now, would never dream of touching. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because the world is about to end, but if nothing else, you have a strong survival instinct. This is why, when you see something that appears to be edible, you don’t know whether to starve to death or risk being poisoned. They’re two means to the same end.

It’s not that you want to die. But to disappear would be so nice.

That’s what every meal feels like to you. Someone offers you a cracker and all you see is processed flour and cancer. They offer you fruit, and all you see are pesticides and E. coli. And forget about organic. Everyone lies. Everything is tainted.

A few months of this obsessive compulsive thinking has you wearing the J.C. Penney pants you wore in ninth grade. You’re tiny. Everyone tells you that you look skinny and you don’t know how to respond. Thank you seems inappropriate because it’s not a compliment, but what else are you supposed to say? There’s poison in my food and we’re all dying?



The doctor keeps telling you that starvation can stop your heart. This fascinates you. It’s not that you want to die. If you wanted to die you’d fill your stomach with high fructose corn syrup and blue dye. You don’t want to die.

But to disappear would feel so nice. At night you lie in bed and touch the empty space between each rib. You feel how far under your ribcage your hand goes. You imagine reaching all the way in. Your fingers clasp around your heart. Your arm disappears inside of you, and then your shoulder and your head. Your body sucks up your body black-hole-style. Then this thought starts to disturb you, but now you can’t get it out of your head and it sticks there like it’s the only image you’ve ever seen in your life.

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You begin to feel angry with everyone else, because it’s easier to feel angry than to feel sad. You don’t express these emotions, but you think about them constantly. You begin to resent your Jewish upbringing. Why are the Torah’s laws piety and yours insanity? One set of rules says chicken and cheese can’t go on the same plate and another set forbids any food from touching a blue plate. The rabbis debate whether giraffe is kosher, and you debate whether it’s O.K. to eat two foods of the same color in one day. That kosher is dedication; yours is absurdity. And so you feel angry, but you know that’s not productive.

Waiting to feel better yields different results than you had expected. You aren’t sure what you expected, actually. You still can’t stop thinking about your body digesting itself through your ribcage and you can’t remember the last time you ate sauce. But you realize that there is so much healing to be done, and no more. Tomorrow you will still be skinny. The next day you will still be obsessive. The day after that you will still be compulsive. No amount of therapy or medicine or patience is going to change that, but somehow you will find a way to coexist with your neuroses.

Related More From Anxiety Read previous contributions to this series.

When the world ends, you’re going to be oxygen and carbon and calcium, just like you are now. That’s what you’ve always been and always will be. You were a bunch of elements. The world was a bunch of elements, hydrogen and helium and some other things, it was Pangaea, it was single-celled organisms, it was volcanoes and erosion and pollination. And from that: Light bulbs. Pyramids. Jury duty. Castles. Bombs. Libraries. “Macbeth.” Farms. Cemeteries. The Bible. The Internet. Sewage systems. Cigarettes. Surgery. We built this, and all we are is oxygen and carbon and calcium. We’re just ingredients, and we built this.

The sun will get too hot and oceans will rise. The earth will go away and everything we built will go away too. Everything will be gone. In the meantime, it’s a sad, amazing little place you inhabit, and the world hasn’t ended yet. We’re here, you’re here, and tomorrow might be good, tomorrow can be good, tomorrow has to be good, because otherwise, what are you doing here?

(Anxiety welcomes submissions at anxiety@nytimes.com. Unfortunately, we can only notify writers whose articles have been accepted for publication.)



Elyse Pitock is a sophomore at Barnard College. She has been a recipient of the Blank Theatre’s Young Playwrights award, Stephen Sondheim’s Young Playwrights, Inc. National Playwriting award, and others.