You wake up. The room is quiet, and there's the faint sound of cars driving on the highway nearby. No one is home. Your mom is at work and your sister is with friends. You roll over lazily to grab your phone. It's 3 in the afternoon. You set your phone down and lay in your bed, staring up at the ceiling.

You've wasted a whole day sleeping, and you have somewhere to go tonight. You're going to see a movie with friends and you have to pick one of them up. This is going to be the last time you see them before you head off to college.

You take your time getting up, laying in bed for another hour. By then, it's four o'clock. You feel icky and slow. You take your clothes that you had meticulously set out the day before for your plans and bring them into the bathroom.

You take a shower. 30 minutes of that shower consists with you just standing in the stream of water, listening to the quiet, thinking about how bad you feel that you slept in, or maybe if you should really go to the movies or not? Because part of you doesn't want to leave and go to deal with getting yourself and your friend there early, and then attempting to join half-heartedly in a conversation with your friends.

You don't want to deal with the fact that your friends might ask you if you're okay, because you don't feel like telling them the problem.

You get out of the shower and get dressed. You still have an hour before you pick up your friend. You have nothing to do. Nearly everything for school is packed so you can't do that, and you had already done the dishes the night before. You sit on the couch, waiting. But the time barely passes.

You look down at your leg and see little imperfections. You scratch at them. You look at the clock. Only five minutes have passed. You're ready to go, you just want to be there already, you want to be sitting in the seats at the movie theater, by yourself. You don't want to be with anyone, and you don't want to have to pick someone up. But it's not because you don't like them. They're your friends, you adore them! But it's because it's stressful.

With 55 minutes left until you leave, you head to your room and grab a notebook. You spend the rest of your time writing down your school schedule multiple times in different ways, different colors, alphabetical order, in your neatest hand writing ever. You even make a calendar for your schedule. You make individual squares on the lined journal paper and create your own graph paper.

Once you're done with that, your mind is still racing, wondering if your friend is even going to be ready when you arrive to pick them up. Your stomach twists and cramps and you get that familiar sweating sensation. Glancing at the clock, you decide it's good enough to leave now. You text your friend and you leave.

When you arrive at your friends house, they tell you to wait outside because they'll be done soon. You wait and you look at the clock. You know you're going to be late. And if you're late, then what's the point of watching the movie? Your stomach twists and gargles again in upset. Finally, your friend emerges. The two of you leave and head to the theater.

The two of you arrive and meet up with your other friends. You smile and wave, but hurriedly usher them towards the ticket counter and buy your tickets. You're still sweating, knowing that time is ticking down.

While you wait in a line of seven people, you look down at your nails, which were once painted nicely. Instead, a few of them are bare and others have residual nail polish from where you had been picking at them. Great. When you get up to the line, you buy your ticket and skip the food. You haven't eaten at all today but your stomach is in such turmoil that you choose to skip out on a snack.

With your friends and tickets in hand, you head to the theatre and manage to make it in time to catch the movie. You think that this is it: after this you can go home and rest. And as you relax and begin to watch the movie, you think of something.

You had sent out an email to your new roommate for college, in hopes that they'd respond and you'd get to know them. You're nervous, you want your roommate to like you and enjoy you... what if you seem weird to them? What if they're mean to you? What if they don't like you? You sneak your phone from your pocket and check your email. Nothing. Okay... maybe she's asleep. Five minutes later, you check again. Nothing. You keep checking until you're an hour into the movie. Then you get a rising feeling in your throat.

You excuse yourself and rush out of the movie and into the bathroom. There, you drop to your knees and dry heave. You feel like you're dying and you're not worth anything. You're sweaty and cold. You feel like you have nothing going for you. You feel like you're useless and can't do anything. No one likes you. Your friends have just invited you to be nice.

You have so much to do that could go wrong. Your lists aren't enough, picking at your nails won't ease the itching in your brain, sleeping in late won't stave off the feeling of worthlessness...

You stay in the bathroom for the rest of the movie, crying and shivering as you sit near the toilet. You feel safe here. There's no one to please, no one to be around to see you in your moment of weakness. For a moment, your mind is at ease and you think of nothing. It's a rare moment that you savor. For a second, you think it would be better just to end everything. Perhaps you'd be happier brain dead, maybe people would be happier...?

Then, you get a text. It's from your friend that you drove here. She's wondering where you are. You tell her. Then, you hear the door to the bathroom open and close. Quickly, you stand up and exit. When you do, your friend looks at you. She looks at you as if she knows what happened. The two of you share a moment of silence before she comes towards you and hugs you, telling you that she loves you and is always here for you. You hug her back. This may not fix it all, but it definitely feels good to have someone for a brief moment.

This is what's it's like for someone living with depression and high-functioning anxiety. It may not be the same for everyone, and most of these experiences are based off my own. It's a story to show people what it's like, and that just the smallest act of kindness can make someone feel worlds better.