Dear Anxiety,

You are the worst. You have made my life less enjoyable from the day you entered. You make me worry about the most pointless things that a normal person wouldn't even think twice about. You don't understand how much I hate you. I hate having panic attacks, I hate that people don't understand me, and I hate that I can't explain it to anyone.

You are manageable, however. You are not the absolute worst thing in the world. Yeah, you're something I've had to learn to live with, but my life could always be worse. Sometimes you're hard to make sense of, but I try my best to work through my triggers and avoid them if I can.

The hardest thing about you is explaining you to my friends and family. They don't understand how a small stain on my bedspread can be all I will think about for the remainder of the day. How when I make a friend mad at me or get a low grade in class, it will drive me crazy until I can make it better. If I get in a fight with a friend, you cause me to make the situation ten times worse than it is and make people question how they can be around me.

I want to help them understand you. I really do. It's hard, however. No one is in my own head and so nobody truly knows what I am going through. Everyone with anxiety feels, reacts, and loves differently and so I can hardly even talk to someone else with anxiety even though they on some level understand me completely.

I try not to make a big deal about you, unless you need to be one. When people don't understand why I'm freaking out about something that they don't think is even necessary to worry about, or why when I get a bad grade I feel like it's the absolute end of the world.

I'm not writing a letter to you because I want people to pity me or tell me "wow I had no idea! You hide it so well!" I don't feel like explaining to them about you, so that's why I am writing to you. That way, hopefully, if my friends and family read this they can understand a bit more about how I deal with you without me having to go into severe depth about you.

I understand I'm meant to live with you and manage how I deal with you. I understand that my friends won't understand completely no matter how much I explain it to them. I understand that sometimes I have to just think about something else in the hopes that you'll go away. You're always with me in some way or another, and I've learned to just let you be a part of my life. You're definitely not a welcome guest in my life, but I've agreed to have you be a part of it just the same.