There once was a time when I couldn't sit down before first cleaning my chair.

There once was a time when I had to count ceiling tiles.

There once was a time when I couldn't leave the restroom without wringing my hands exactly 12 times under the hot soapy water. And if it didn't feel right, I had to do it again.

There once was a time when I couldn't walk through a doorway until the second hand of my watch rested momentarily on the 12.

There are still times when I am too afraid to ask a basic question in class.

There are still times when I am too nervous to say more than a few short words.

There are still times when my anxiety gets the better of me.

This is not a story about how I have "beaten" my anxiety and am better off because of the challenges that I've faced. This is a story about the crippling effects that living this way has had on me, and how such adversity has changed who I consider myself to be. Anxiety is something that we all deal with, but it becomes a bit more serious when it starts to interfere with your day-to-day life. Obviously counting things and doing tasks in multiples of 12 can get bothersome, especially when the rest of the group has left the room and you're still waiting for the second hand to pause on the twelve. Fifteen more seconds...

I can't remember exactly when, but sometime in my first two years of high school, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Let me clear the misconceptions now; although I was not keen on germs, OCD is more than just wanting to be clean. It's an inexplicable need for certain things. It used to feel as though the world would end if the compulsions were not met. I didn't know why I had to do things in specific ways, but I was convinced that this impending darkness would consume me if I did not comply with the compulsions. My therapist at the time told me that these feelings were ways that my anxiety manifested itself. Basically, I just heard that I was crazy.

Since then, I have come a long way in managing my OCD. I no longer feel the need to count every step I take, or to do things in multiples of twelve, or that I must redo certain things until they feel 'just right'. It's definitely liberating, but my anxiety is still here, taking somewhat of a hold over my life. There are times when it feels as though any given task is so immense that I cannot possibly complete it. There are a million different ways that I look at every situation, and my mind always strays to the worst possible outcome. Sometimes I can't fall asleep because my mind is thinking so many different things that I feel a physical tingling sensation in the back of my head, near the nape of the neck. And sometimes, when it gets really bad, I shake in my hands and feet, and tears stream uncontrollably down my face. It's embarrassing, especially because I have absolutely no control over it, and as hard as I try I can never seem to make it stop until it wants to stop. It absolutely sucks.

This anxiety is one of the biggest challenges I face; it's an obstacle I have to account for in every new task I set out to do, from making new friends to auditioning for an ensemble to simply doing my homework. I hate that I have to live this way, and there are a lot of times when I question why I have to struggle so much. I catch myself looking at other people and thinking, "Why can't I be normal, like them?" Out of all the things I dislike about my anxiety, this desire to conform is the one thing I have the most hatred for. I find that I frequently need to revisit something my mother shared with me many years ago; normal is a dryer setting. There is no such thing as 'normal' and 'abnormal', only what we perceive to be so. It's very, very hard to stop the negative thoughts from creeping in, telling me how I am 'crazy' and 'weird' and 'not normal'. But I work very hard to knock these thoughts down, and remind myself that with individual people, these adjectives don't apply. I'm not the best at it, but I try.

I sometimes joke that my life is 'one long string of panic attacks' because it makes me feel better about why I freak over things that seem to be such small occurrences. But, I'm starting to recognize the moments when I am not so nervous I could puke. Like during an orchestra performance, or when I'm on a long run, or when I'm laughing with good friends. I have come to cherish all the small moments when I realize that I am not anxious, and these are the memories I pull up when I feel as though the dark cloud of anxiety is about to swallow me whole. Anxiety absolutely, positively, 100 percent sucks, but there are brief glimmers of amazing light that keep me going. As I've grown and learned to handle my anxiety, these flashes of light have become more and more frequent. I hope that someday, I can get to the point where my life is instead one long ray of light, with a few minor shadows lessening the intensity here and there. I'll never be as bright and shiny as I want to be, but perfect is overrated, anyways.