I'm not entirely sure when you came into my life, but I do know that it was shortly after my relationship with Depression. I was cold and numb. Depression had left me weak. He had broke my heart, like every other relationship I had ever been in, and left me lying on the porch steps to my front door. I felt so useless, I didn't even bother getting up.

That's when you showed up.

You picked me up and carried me into my house and laid me gently in bed to rest. You told me everything was going to be okay, and for a moment I had hope that it would. I thought that you were going to be different. I thought that you would motivate me, that you would help me find my purpose again, that you would help me become the person I forgot I ever was before I entered these toxic relationships. I thought you would be good for me. But I thought wrong.

Moments later you startle me awake from my slumber only to tell me that I am wasting my life away and that I need to be more productive. I can see how this can seem motivational to some people, having random bursts of enthusiasm, but it is anything but positive. I felt tired. I wanted to give up, but you were always there to tell me how pathetic I was for starting my assignments late or making me feel bad for skipping class because just the thought of giving a presentation to a room full of people sends me into a frenzy of panic. I know that's what most people think anxiety is like, but oh, it's so much worse than that.

I can't sleep because you always wake me up and leave me breathless and suffocate me with thoughts that I will waste away to nothing if I don't get up and do something. Instead of living my life like a normal teenager staying out late, hanging out with my friends, having fun, you have me pacing the halls at two in the morning sick with worry over something I said over five years ago. Instead of experiencing college life properly and making new friends, you have me fear all social settings and make me paranoid, thinking that everyone around me is looking at me, judging me. You make me fear routine because it's the same lifeless, dreary day over and over again, but you also make me fear change because you tell me the world is too dangerous for me and that my emotions are too fragile. You tell me my friends aren't really my friends and that they hate me and that I'm just the centerpiece of their grand joke. I hate you for this.

You mockingly ask me that "If I hate you so much, then why do I keep you a secret? Why do I stay with you?" This is a question I ask myself too often. People think that it's so easy to just open up and talk about these types of relationships, but what people don't understand is that it's my own anxieties that make the conversation hard. I am scared that no one will understand me. I am scared that I will sound crazy . I am scared that no one will care. So I say nothing. I close myself off in my own little cocoon and put my headphones in my ears and put a book in front of my face in hopes that music or living in a fantasy world will heal me, even just a little. Because suffering in silence is the only way you've taught me how to cope.

I ache in distress that I will never be enough or that I'll never be the person my family and friends need. I shake with worry when I think about the future because it's not set in stone and I fret that all my dreams and hopes will leave me without success and useless. Even the smallest amounts of stress feels like I am carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders because you make everything seem so heavy and you make me seem so small.

I know staying in this kind of relationship is toxic, but just like Depression, you've proved to be hard to get rid of and you leave me tired and exhausted. No matter the constant worrying, I can never seem to give up and neither should anyone else that has ever had the chance of meeting you.