THE HUMMING WIRE | Faith Galliano Desai
My chest hummed like a wire pulled too tight. Breath shallow, palms damp, thoughts circling in jagged loops. I used to call this anxiety, a fault line inside me, a weakness. But in that moment, it felt less like a flaw than a force, as if my body had gathered more current than it knew how to hold, energy straining for a direction.
Anxiety isn’t just a thought. It’s energy, electric and restless, that shows up in the body and doesn’t always know where to go. Sometimes it’s sharp, like static in the jaw. Other times it’s a quieter hum, until we notice our shoulders aching.
Most of the time, it’s waiting for something.
Something pending. Something unresolved. Something that hasn’t happened yet.
It waits in that half-light between maybe and not yet, winding itself into a coil inside. I know the way we brace for impact we can’t see, almost without thinking, because bracing feels safer than being caught off guard.
Anxiety is undirected energy. It wants to move.
It wants to flow out as tears, or laughter, or a deep breath that shakes the whole body. It wants to stretch us, to dance, to paint, to sing, to say what we’re afraid to say.
It can show up as the urge to scream or the need to curl up and sob.
It doesn’t care about being polite. It just wants a way out.
The trouble starts when I try to think my way out of it.
Turning it over in the mind, scanning every angle, convinced that if I can just figure out the reason, it will dissolve. It never does.
Or when I try to force calm, keep it contained. That’s when it becomes a pressurized hum, bottled up, impossible to reason with. My chest grows tight. My stomach knots. The more I clamp down, the tighter it gets.
Really, anxiety is the desire to express, crashing into the habit of repression.
It’s wanting to move, but freezing instead.
Sometimes there’s shame tangled in there. The quiet belief that I shouldn’t be feeling this much, or that something’s wrong with me for having big sensations.
And in that moment before I move, before I shut it down, there’s often a stillness. Not the peaceful kind, but the charged kind, like the air before a storm. That’s the place to notice. It’s the moment we can choose.
When I remember anxiety is just energy that wants to move, something shifts.
When I’m not afraid of the feeling, it loses a lot of its power. It becomes something I can move with, not just something that happens to me.
Sometimes, it takes a long walk, a long cry, or a long day before it loosens. But it does. It stops being a monster under the bed and starts being something I can meet. Sometimes, it’s a wave I can ride. Sometimes, it’s more like a heavy rain I just stand in until it passes.
And there’s often a hesitation right there, a half-second where the old reflex says don’t. If I can breathe into it, even a little, the energy has a chance to change shape.
Cry until your face feels rinsed. Stretch until your joints sigh. Make art you’ll never hang, sing off-key, dance until your calves ache. Somewhere in the middle of that, the coil unwinds.
The hum fades.
Faith Galliano Desai is a psychologist and writer whose work explores the intersections of emotion, the nervous system, trauma, and the body’s innate capacity for healing. Galliano Desai brings a background in holistic approaches to wellness and a deep curiosity about how stories move through us as energy. Her essays often weave lived experience with reflections on grief, anxiety, and the ways the body expresses what the mind cannot. She is at work on a collection of essays that trace the movement of feeling from wound to restoration.