If you have read any of my other articles before, then I’m positive that you know by now that I have suffered from extreme depression and anxiety most of my life. If you are not family and you have ever come in contact with me in the outside world before, especially if I went to high school with you (shout out to Walt Whitman High School class of 2016), then you have probably seen how anxiety, in particular, affects me socially. In fact, you have probably only ever seen glimpses of the person that I really am and that my family and close friends all know me to be, assuming you have seen it at all.

I have really really bad social anxiety paired with something called avoidant personality disorder. What this pretty much means is that I want more than anything to be social, to be friendly, and to make as many meaningful social and personal connections as I can. Unfortunately, this disorder also causes me to be extremely shy, be overly sensitive to social criticism or rejection, feel socially inferior to others (which trust me, depression alone causes enough of an inferiority complex in me, to begin with), and to have this extreme irrational fear of social rejection and the prospect of making an idiot of myself in social situations. As a result, I tend to withdraw from others as much as possible and avoid social interaction as much as I possibly can, which is where the name of the disorder comes from.

There is always so much that I want to say to people, so many things that I want to do, so many people that I would love to strike up a conversation with or try to build a friendship with. It hurts me that I am the way I am sometimes, that I get so in my own head about it that I end up constructing this invisible tether that always seems to hold me back from acting on any of these desires.

For years I struggled to find some way to just get it all out, to be able to say what I wanted to say to whoever I wanted to say it to, or really just anyone at all that would listen. I wanted to be the person I was with my family. Most days of school, right up until my last day of high school, it wasn’t unusual for me not to say a single word all day long.

My mom always used to tell me when I was young how surprised she was when my teachers told her that I was the quiet kid in class. As soon as I got home every day, my lips started moving a mile a minute and didn’t stop until my head hit the pillow at night.

She always said it was like I bottled all my thoughts up all day and just let it all out when I got home. Of course, she was right. She just didn’t know why I was bottling it up (nor did I really fully understand it until age 18) and it never really occurred to her to question it.

When I was in about seventh grade, I remember having this idea about a story that I thought would make an interesting movie or book. I remember wanting to tell somebody about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk for long enough to fully explain it to any of my friends and I was afraid that I may mess up trying to explain it or may get stopped in the middle of explaining it because they didn’t like it.

I also worried about finding some way to work into the conversation that I had this story idea in my head. For whatever reason, I decided to write down the story on a piece of paper during lunch rather than tell anyone about it.

That was when my ongoing love affair with writing began. I was able to express everything I wanted to say. I got my story down and even made some notes on the paper about certain things. The next day, I handed it to one of my friends to read.

I finally had found a way to communicate all the things swirling around in my head. I may not be able to verbally tell anyone my thoughts and ideas and opinions unless I’m really close with them, but I can write all that down and share it that way. Over the years, I’ve been placed on medication for my anxiety, and while it definitely has made a tremendous difference, there is only so much that medication can do.

I still withdraw, and I still stay quiet most of the time, though now I actively try to push myself into uncomfortable situations to combat the disorder through exposure therapy. Writing has remained constant though. Writing always has and always will be the way I feel most comfortable communicating with others.

I mentioned earlier that people I went to high school with have seen the results of my anxiety first hand. They almost all know me as the quiet kid that sat in the corner and never really said anything or interacted with anyone, but if there was ever an occasion for him to speak it was usually because he had something very important to say.

They may have noticed a change in me around senior year, when I really started sharing some of my writing with others, and when I first got on medication dedicated solely to addressing anxiety in addition to the depression medication that I had already been on for about two years.

If any of you are reading this, if any of you have ever wanted to have a conversation with me or get to know me better, or ever just wondered why I was the way I was, this article is for you. Message me and you’ll see a different, more articulate, more social me than anything that you have ever known just from the writing in my messages.

If anyone at all wants to know more about me, read my articles, and some of my writing. On the page is the only place I really feel that I can be myself and show my true self to the world.

If I could go back in time and pluck this disorder and all my anxiety out of my genetics, I never would. Out of darkness and fear came beauty and passion. Without anxiety, I would never have come to fall for writing like I have. For me, writing has been, and will continue to be, the corkscrew that uncorks all the bottled up things I’ve ever wanted to say through the years, but couldn’t.