Anxiety is a pretty funny thing. Granted, thinking that not washing your hands every ten minutes will result in the world imploding might not seem hysterical now, but after 19 years of it, one learns to develop a sense of humor. Mental health problems can distort a child’s world beyond recognition. This is my story.

I was never a perfectly normal child growing up (cue the eye-rolls). Yes, I went through the stereotypical ballerina phase, and yes I had fights with my sibling (sometimes quite often). But something always seemed off inside my mind. I could play and have fun, but after a certain point it would become too much for me. The noise of the carousel would become too loud, there would be too many people in the room, or I felt like just couldn’t handle my surroundings anymore. I dealt with the feeling by crying a lot, so I was labeled a sensitive child. I was basically allergic to the entirety of nature, became sick very easily, and was terrified of anything that did not sparkle or look as friendly as Hello Kitty. I began to notice that I felt uncomfortable around dirty things, and that I felt sensations differently than other children. I couldn’t get my clothes wet at a pool party- instead of feeling uncomfortable, my skin would feel as if someone had tried to light me on fire. Needless to say, explaining that to your classmates won’t make you very many friends. Or every time I had to talk in front of other people it felt like someone decided to wrap their hands around my throat and spin my head in circles at the same time, quite the fun experience when you are introducing yourself to new acquaintances.

Years passed and I was able to cope enough to make a small group of close-knit friends. However, that does not mean that I was socially capable in the least. I was still terrified of about 99 percent of the world, and I developed ticks as an outlet for expressing my ever present anxiety. I kept every possible emotion bottled up inside for fear of being teased more than I already was, and that was the way it manifested. I became the child that the nurse knew on a first name basis. Partially because I was allergic to everything from grass to the cold, but also because I would feign allergy or asthma attacks to be able to come home early. The teasing in school got to a point where I would pretend to be sick just so I could go home and get away from my less than understanding peers. Adults described me as an endearingly awkward child, but coming from a town where driving anything less than a BMW translates into “you’re poor” in their minds doesn’t exactly breed the nicest of children.

School sucked plenty, and it continued to well into my high school years. But the one thing that was consistently wonderful was my home life. Growing up I had many friends that had intensely strict parents. You know the kind- that parent from your childhood memories who threw enormous fits over food being brought into any room that wasn’t the kitchen, or punished their children for getting grass stains on their clothes. And oh, heaven forbid you track some mud into the house after an afternoon outside, that would bring a swift and painful end to your impossibly short seven-year old life. Needless to say, those types of parents were about as far away as you could get from my mother and father. We roller skated around the house, had a music room instead of a living room, and were allowed to cause general chaos as long as no one was hurt. If you managed to make my mother scream, you deserved to be yelled at. And the only reason one could get my father mad was if he felt that you were shirking on your responsibilities and not living up to your full potential (he was a bit easier to set off considering he believed that my sister and I were capable of quite anything- curing cancer and being president included).

My parents were the most understanding and supportive people two children could ask for. When my sister (Laura), and I were convinced we’d become ballerinas, they enrolled us in dance lessons, and so on and so forth for our dreams of being karate masters, professional softball players, and future astronauts. They were understanding through times of stress, and pushed my sister and I when we lacked confidence. However, this is the part where my sister and I diverge. My sister is a very socially outgoing person. Yes, she experiences normal levels of anxiety just like everyone else, but she was far more socially adaptable than I was. My father used to push us to conquer our fears. But to someone with anxiety, that simply makes everything worse. While he always had the best of intentions, my biological anxiety fed off of the terror that attempting to conquer my fears the “normal” way gave me. I became more and more scared of normal situations whereas my sister continued to develop at a normal pace. Home, while still a mostly amazing place, began to have a tinge of stress to it. Upon entering middle school, my fear of disappointing my parents mounted so much that I began to have panic attacks. I dreaded getting any grade below a 90 because I knew that my parents thought I was capable of straight A’s. And I truly was, however the anxiety of the possibility that I wasn’t became a massive anchor that weighed down my success. I made it through middle school with A’s and B’s, and came out mostly unscathed.

But I still continued to put inordinate amounts of pressure on myself for every situation, even unnecessary ones. As it built, my panic attacks became more severe and my OCD came out in ways that it hadn’t before. I began to have impulsive thoughts that if I didn’t clean my hands often enough, I would touch something and die of some insanely rare disease that somehow was accidentally transported to my generic suburban town of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Or maybe, if I didn’t clean my hair well enough, the entire school would make fun of me for the rest of my life and I would have to switch schools and move to some remote area where it was actually legal to marry your cousin. High school became a daily challenge, seeing how long I could go without panicking about something, and trying my best to fight my irrational thoughts. Not only did I have to worry about what people thought of my intelligence, or my weird anxiety driven habits, but I also had to deal with the lovely awkward phase that my wonderful genetics blessed me with (if you were curious, it spanned from about fourth grade till my junior year of high school. I’ve tried and failed to get rid of all photographic evidence). The pressure of academics, making friends, dealing with my odd anxiety rituals, and trying to keep myself calm started to wear on me as I went through high school. I developed major depression in addition to dysthymia, and tried my best to keep my symptoms to myself.

But as it wore on it became more and more difficult to control. I began to hate myself, the way I looked, the way I walked, talked, and dressed- absolutely everything. Trying to do things I liked wasn’t making anything better, so I developed a very negative habit. I was on the internet one day (an amazing yet awfully dangerous place), when I came upon a modeling page. The girls looked so pretty, skinny, and above all, they seemed truly happy. My worn out mind processed it as, “Hey, these girls are super beautiful, that must be why they’re so happy”. And so I tried for months to starve myself to their level of “beauty”. I finally felt a sense of control over my life- it was comforting to know that I had control over how much I ate when it seemed like I could control nothing else in my life. My OCD and anxiety became “better” and as I began to lose weight I started to like myself more as well. In truth, my mental health problems were not “bettered” by my unhealthy actions. What had happened was I focused so much on what was going in to my body, that I had time to think of little else. What I failed to realize was that the reason the girls in the pictures looked so happy was because they liked themselves for who they are, not what they looked like on the outside. Or because they were being paid a fuck ton of money to smile. It’s a toss up.

My happiness was artificial, and it took my parents finding out about my problem to make me realize this. I saw how much pain my self-hatred was causing my family, and it gave me a reason to try to turn myself around. I pretended like it was a simple solution, like my disorder was like a switch I could turn on and off. But I still struggle with recovery to this day, over six years later. I had grown so used to hating myself that it became a daily chore to try and find things that were good about me. My parents enrolled me in my first round of therapy since childhood. And it did absolutely nothing. My therapist liked to spend his time talking about the miracle of childbirth and telling me to “make a connection with my inner self through my natural birthing abilitites”. Needless to say, he seemed to have gone off the deep end… quite a while ago. And so I started working on myself alone. I had difficulty sharing details with others, so I never let anyone know that I was still struggling with my self-image.

Finally, in the beginning of my senior year I began to appreciate myself more, and the clouds seemed to part ever so slightly. I started doing things that made me happy because I wanted to and not because I felt the need to please other people. I began seeing a new therapist who helped me work wonders on my social anxiety and OCD. Eventually, I saw a psychiatrist and was prescribed medication for my severe anxiety and depression. With the new medication and therapy, I began to become a happier and certainly far healthier person. I found that I could communicate what I was truly feeling far easier, and have opposing discussions/viewpoints without the intense, debilitating fear of disappointing or upsetting people. Needless to say, my academics were not as strong as they should have been that year, but I was developing myself, something that would outlast grades.

I am now a college graduate and can say that I am happily and healthily adjusting to life on my own (“my own” still meaning living in a house with my father and sister. Moving out is a whole other beast). My lifelong struggle with anxiety has helped me learn to appreciate every aspect of myself- from my weird habits (most of which are now finally not OCD induced- I am just a strange person in general), to my awkward behavior that I fully embrace as a permanent part of me. I do what I wish without worrying what others think (usually), and I know that no matter what I do my family will be proud of me as long as I try my best. I am bettering myself for the sake of wanting to do my best, and am doing well because I want to, not because I feel the need to make my parents happy. And in that process, hopefully I have made them very proud.

If you are struggling and are looking for a sign to get help, this is it. There are so many wonderful things in this world that you can accomplish, and your struggle does not invalidate your ability to do anything. Just because you suffer from whatever variety of ailments there are in this world, does not mean that you cannot start taking the steps necessary to see yourself succeed. So many people portray their successes to the world as a straight line, but there is no catch-all method for achieving your goals. Success is not linear, nor is it defined by a singular thing. Success to you may be being able to get up before noon, or remembering to eat breakfast. Whatever it means to you, know that you have the power to achieve it. You’ve made it this far, right?