Letter Twelve: Anxiety

Welcome to letter twelve of this series, hopefully your vision of me has changed and you can take a look back and wonder where some of you guys fucked up.

So lets not waste anymore time, we will call this one Anxiety.

Anxiety. By definition, it is a "feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome."

This is my favorite letter so far, and it will be the hardest to write. I tell everyone I am super stressed out, which is true, but it is also because of my anxiety. I have ruined friendships, relationships, connections with people because of it. The sinking feeling is they are always going to be sick of me and leave and I always push them away before that happens. I love when people say it's all in my head, if it's all in my head, why does it feel like my heart is going to explode because it's beating so fast. It's not feeling scared or nervous about doing something, it takes over your entire body and makes it hard to focus and you eventually lose control. We all lose control when we have anxiety attacks, even if it's for a split second, we feel powerless against our mental illness. I think I purposely screw up relations with people as a defense mechanism because hurting someone else is better then being hurt. When people ask me what anxiety feels like, how could I answer that? Like all the air has left the room and the blood is rushing to my brain and I can barely comprehend words. I have anxiety about a lot of things, like driving, eating, talking, singing, working out, etc. They all have their own different reasons behind why they make my anxious, like driving at night makes me wanna throw up. Talking in front of large crowds makes me anxious because I feel like everyone is judging me for my speech impediment. Anxiety feels like this:

Like you are constantly trapped in your head and you're screaming to get out and you can't. Anxiety makes me feel like the worst thing on the planet because I'll be super stoked for plans then be the person to cancel them because I'm anxious about it. I'd rather stay inside all day and be on my laptop then go out and meet people and have a normal social life. I want to go out, don't get me wrong, but when I do I overthink , every possible outcome and it's the most terrifying thing to have a brain that is working against you. I jump to conclusions so quick too and it's not because I am judging you, my brain does that and I can't apologize enough because everything is my fault and I say sorry way too much.

So anxiety, you won.