I’m going to start this off by telling you about me because I’m conceited and that’s my favorite subject. As of right now, I am a twenty-year-old college junior. I currently write for two online magazines, The Odyssey and Her Campus. I am the publications coordinator for my sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta. I am a member of the Honors Society of my university, Appalachian State. I have a Professional Writing internship at a local magazine, High Country Press. Lastly, I am a Resident Assistant on top of being a full-time student with a social life. (Alright, so it’s like four friends but it’s still a social life thanks to ~technicalities~)

My resume is stacked, and the bags under my eyes prove it. Even through all of this work, though, I’m a pretty pleasant person. People come to me to talk about their lives, so I’m on coffee dates nearly 24/7 catching up with friends or classmates or residents. I am actively sought out to check over homework for my friends, or to help them “understand” (aka help write) their theses statements. And from the sheer number of times strangers just sit down with me at the library I guess I’d say I’m pretty approachable. To put it simply, sometimes it seems like I do it all, and do it well.

That is until I don’t.

Sometimes I can’t even think about talking to anyone or reaching out for anything because my anxiety gets so bad and the panic attacks begin. It feels like the walls are closing in on me, and as the room gets smaller so does my chance to escape this horrible cycle of apathy and then far too much empathy that leaves me clawing at my chest and gasping for breath with tears in my eyes at 2:43 am on a Sunday night. Those nights when I make my way to the bathroom and I see myself with eyeliner smudged, mascara running, and hair knotted from frantically running my hands through it so many times, I do not see myself. (To be completely honest, I see the girl from The Grudge, but we won’t go there.) I see a girl who is terrified of her own reflection desperately trying to understand what cursed her to react like this in some stressful situations.

When I’m shaking against the wall of the communal restrooms and clutching the polished sink like an anchor, I don’t see a leader.

Now I’m not writing this to be funny, and I’m not writing this for some kind of poetic sympathy. I’m definitely not the only one out there that has to deal with this on a daily basis, I’ll even admit that a lot of people have it a lot worse than me. To be honest, I think that this is why I write. To maybe make this ghost a little more real to people, to show them what exactly people with anxiety fight against every day. Or maybe I write to make this more real for myself and to remind me that I’m not alone. I don’t know anymore, but either way, I hope it works. Some of my friends call me dictionary because I’m so good with words, but honestly I always feel more like atlas because I know what it is like to have the weight of the entire world resting on my back.

What I will say is this: I never let my anxiety define me. It may have the power to mess up my makeup or ruin my day, but I refuse to let it be all that I am.

What I am is a leader through and through. I am someone who makes decisions comfortably and confidently. I am someone who has worked her ass off to get where she is today, and I will never degrade my progress by letting my bad nights overwhelm my good ones. My anxiety is not my crutch, but my tool. I use it to really focus on people, on what they want, what they need, what I can do for them. My anxiety helps me understand people, and it inspires me to do everything that I possibly can to do right by them. Sometimes I tell people about my anxiety so that I can relate to them. They are always surprised because I come across as being so confident, and I tell them honestly that I work very hard to be the person that they see me be, but I remind them that it’s okay to not be entirely okay. I learned very recently that my ability to admit my weaknesses made me a better leader than emphasizing my strengths ever did.

Being a leader with anxiety, for some, seems like an oxymoron. But to me, it’s all I have ever known. As a leader, I work every day to not only believe in everyone else around me but to believe in myself, and I challenge you too. It’s not an easy process, not a switch you can flip or a mood you can suddenly change, but it’s worth it. I have learned that all I can do is remind myself that I can do it. That I earned this leadership role because I was trusted to handle it because I proved time and time again that I was the right person for the job, and that people have faith in me even when I don’t have faith in myself. So if you can’t trust anything else in your life, trust yourself. I mean, you’ve gotten this far, right?

You have survived nights a lot worse than the one’s when anxiety strikes, you have already done great things even in the face of this overwhelming uncertainty, and if that isn’t something that a leader does than I don’t know what is.