I know I'm not made up of only my anxiety, but it sure does feel like it sometimes.

It's gotten better as I've grown and been exposed to and learned from new situations. Driving somewhere I've never been before. Being on my own in a new place. Talking on the phone to a stranger. Opening the damn door to a bathroom when I don't know if it's a single toilet or more than one person can be in there at one time with multiple stalls. Trying to decipher the deeper meaning behind texts when there might not be any.

Some of that might sound ridiculous if you've never experienced the spike of panic associated with them. But for me, the fear is and has been real, and it's taken years for me to build enough confidence up in myself to get in the car and drive there, to speak on the phone without stuttering, and to quell the nauseating chill, that feeling of eternal emptiness like a pitfall, when I get a simple text that doesn't seem so simple right away.

I don't know where this anxiety came from. I can remember being particularly shy in my childhood, but the anxiety I experience is different than that feeling; it has taken over, and shyness in kids isn't usually a cause for alarm anyway.

But somewhere along the line, this awful thing came out of hiding and tried to overwhelm me.

For a while, it did. And sometimes it still does. This past week, it was out of control - so many stresses culminating from different areas of my life at once. All day, that awful feeling would be there, trying to torture me into throwing in the towel and succumbing to it. For a moment, it would pass as I became distracted, but that was all too brief, and it would be back again.

I'm not proud of being unable to totally banish my anxiety from my life, but I am proud of the progress I've made toward managing it better. Hopefully, as I continue to experience life and be challenged in positive ways, I'll continue to get a better grip on it and be able to process it more quickly so that preparing to hang out with my friends doesn't become a fight or flight scenario.