It's 1 a.m. on a Thursday. I should be sleeping, but my racing thoughts have once again gotten the best of me. It's dark, I'm alone, and there's nowhere to go to escape those thoughts.

I'm crying uncontrollably. Nothing's happened, really. But yet the world feels like it's going to end.

I can't breathe. I lie in my bed, in the fetal position, gasping for air through my heavy sobbing. I begin dry heaving, certain that I'm going to vomit.

I want it to stop, but I don't know how to do so. I don't even know what brought this particular episode on.

I reach for my phone and try to text through my tears and blurry vision. I need someone to talk to, some sort of interaction. But at 1 a.m., those that I turn to are fast asleep.

I've never felt so alone. I've never felt so lost and unsure of how to make it through a night.

This isn't the first time this has happened, but it is the first it's happened in some time.

My personal life has been going smoothly, but my professional world has slowly been crushing me. Breaking was inevitable.

I've been withdrawn, with the exception of a few close people that I'd be lost without right now.

Each day, my job forces me to be outgoing, to strike up conversations with acquaintances and strangers, when really I want to shut down and not talk to anyone. My friends and coworkers expect me to be my normal self. They expect me to laugh and make jokes, so I try to push through and act like I'm fine. But acting is draining.

Forcing myself to be happy makes me feel more depressed. I've been spiraling downward, ganging speed on the way down.

People expect normal, but I no longer know what normal is. You're not alone, guys. I want so badly to return to normal, too.

I constantly feel like a burden to those around me. When my anxiety gets high and I feel lonely, I reach out to one of the very few people that I love and trust. I'm lucky to have a few wonderfully supportive people in my corner who have done everything they can to help me, but that doesn't help me shake the feeling of being a burden.

Because anxiety doesn't understand reason. I know that this will pass. I know that I have made it through seemingly unbearable times, and I will again. But those dark times still feel like the end of the world. Though I know it's not going to kill me, it feels like it will.

I don't want to feel like this anymore. I don't want the people I care about to suffer in dealing with this anymore. I just want the storm to pass.

But as one special person told me, "Sometimes hitting bottom helps us see how to get up."