Dear Anxiety,

Before we met, I was a normal young adult. I was going to school, working and living at home.

I had always heard about you paying other people visits, but I didn’t think too much about you because you had never come to visit me, and thought you never would.

But I was wrong.

It was last year when I started my first semester as a transfer student at a Cal State when you enetered my life.

I had just moved out on my own and took on a big load of classes on top of working part-time.

I was excited to start school and was completely sure I coud handle anything that was thrown at me.

Until you arrived.

Before your arrival I had sensed something wrong with myself.

I wasn't myself. But I figured that maybe I was just homesick.

Your friend stress, was already starting to vist me casually.

I hated stress.

Stress always put me in dreadful moods that eventually led up to your visit, making my world come crashing down.

I remember the day so clear.

I was in one of my journalism classes when we first met.

People were conducting presentations that day.

Though you were invisible to everybody else in the classroom, I saw you very clearly.

Your presence caused my body to react in a strange, unfamiliar way.

I lost my breath and felt like I couldn’t breath. My heart started to pound extremely fast. My vision started to blur. I wanted to throw up and pass out at the same time.

"But why?," I told myself in my head. "I'm just sitting in class?!!!" I was confused as to why this was happening.

I didn’t want to step out while a classmate was presenting because it felt rude to do so, especially since I would have to walk all the way across the classroom to exit.

But I knew if I didn’t, I would throw up in front of everybody.

I got up and left as soon as my classmate took a pause during their presentation. I had left my belongings so the professor didn’t think I was leaving for the whole class session.

I paced quickly to the restroom and entered a stall to throw up.

You followed me all the way there.

Why Anxiety? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?

I tried to throw up, but I couldn’t.

People kept coming in and out of the small two-stall bathroom, so I went outside to try to take deep breaths.

I wanted to cry.

What were you doing to me that was causing me to act this way?

I didn’t know who to call until I thought of my roommate.

She had told me you had visited her before.

So I called her knowing she was probably in class, but to my surprise she answered.

I panicked on the phone to her. I couldn't calm down. I told her how you were there and how you weren’t leaving me alone.

She told me, “he’s attacking you.”

It was 12:40 p.m. and there I was, in a university hallway, having an anxiety attack.

I couldn’t go back to class. I felt nauseous and faint.

All of a sudden, you punched my stomach and I knew right there and then that I had to run into the restroom to throw up.

I ran in and it all came out.

After that, I sat outside the classroom the whole class period, because I felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest.

Once the class was over, I ran in to grab my backpack and left for home.

I had to skip my next class and tell the professor I was feeling ill.

I really was sick, thanks to you anxiety.

He wound't have understood if I told him your presence was causing me to miss class.

After that dreadful day, you haunted me at least once a week for the next couple of weeks.

I would wake up and you were there, lying next to me.

I felt hopeless, like I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish anything because you were beside me, torturing me.

You even almost ruined my twenty-first birthday. I went with my boyfriend to Universal Studios Horror Nights. We grabbed a bite before entering the park.

Halfway into my dinner, I felt a werid presence. I felt your presence.

When we headed to the park, I saw you. You were ready to attack me.

Instantly, you punched my stomach. I felt as if I was going to passout and regurigate.

I told my boyfriend, “I don’t feel well, I don’t know if I can go in there.”

He couldn’t believe that I went from being perfectly fine to feeling horrible so quickly.

“Please don't let this affect you on your own birthday,” he told me.

He didn't understand that I wasn’t doing this to myself.

Anxiety, YOU were casuing this.

After some time, you oddly enough left and I ended up enjoying myself that night.

After that weekend I told myself that this had to come to a stop, that you had to STOP visitng me.

But how do you make something stop that you can't control?

That’s what people who don’t suffer from anxiety don’t understand.

I never understood it either until you came into my life.

I wanted to let you know that I will not let you control my life. You can try to hurt me and ruin my days, but I will not let you become the reason for my failures.

Every time you come around now I try to ignore you and you know I am ignoring you, hence why you don't hurt me as bad as before.

I want you to know that you and your friend, stress, will no longer be destroying my life.

I am on a mission to get rid of you entirely, Anxiety. Alongside thousands of other college students, I am dealing with you constantly trying to poison my life. I can take no more and I will not tolerate you any longer.

Sincerely,

A college student currently battling you (and winning).