Feeling yourself slowly slip away from reality and lose the ability to think straight is something no one should have to endure, yet millions of Americans have it. People from different childhoods, different memories, and different stresses all united by one common enemy: anxiety.
And that's what anxiety is, an enemy. There's a constant battle between its demons and positivity inside someone's mind. When anxiety wins, it seems like a nightmare come true at times.
It's almost impossible to describe anxiety to someone who doesn't have it. Those moments when all of the sudden you can't think straight, there's a faint buzzing in your head that grows louder and louder the more you try to tune it out, and the overwhelming desire to crawl up into a corner, turn off the lights and avoid anything and everything isn't an easy thing to communicate.
And the symptoms are different for everyone. Anxiety isn't identical from one person to the next; there are different triggers that set off a different array of emotions. For those of you who don't suffer from these attacks, please know one thing: we don't have total control over ourselves during these moments. For me, nothing makes sense in the midst of an anxiety attack. The more I try to think through everything happening in my head, the more confusion swarms my thoughts.
But, despite all of these moments where it feels like some invisible walls are crashing down around you, anxiety does not make you any less of a person. Anxiety is one piece to the complex puzzle that makes you, you. For all of the times filled with fear, anger or frustration, you can wake up the next morning a little bit a calmer with a much better frame of mind. Even though anxiety can sneak up on you at the strangest times, it makes you know that you can survive almost anything that is thrown at you.
But, no matter how many inner fights you're facing or how many anxiety attacks you've suffered, you're the same person you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. If anything, you're a little bit better because you survived another moment you thought you couldn't.
