Anxiety creeps up on you and suffocates the surrounding air. You can feel it approaching but there is nothing that you can do to stop it. It consumes you with the idea that what will go wrong, will, and leaves you completely stuck. As the thoughts continue a depression sinks in as you realize that you are not the one in control of your thoughts. And then you start to feel alone. You start to ask yourself questions along the lines of, "Why am I like this?", "Why is this happening to me?", "How do I stop this?" You feel completely consumed by your illness that is always there hiding within you.

So what is anxiety really? Well, it’s really hard to explain and understand what anxiety is and how it relates to what it feels physically within you. I thought about this for a long time and I decided that the best way to explain what it is like to have anxiety is by showing what a normal day for a person with anxiety is like (put yourself into this character):

It’s 7 a.m. on a Monday morning. Your heart is racing. It is a terrible, full-body heartbeat that makes your whole body shake. It has an exciting feeling to it at first until it makes your stomach flip. Your face starts to heat up and you start to feel a bit dizzy. Your hands and face are starting to sweat and you know that you just need to sit down. You still have no idea why this is happening to you but you are used to it. You want to lay down in silence but you can’t because you look at the time and realize that you are going to be late for work. It’s not like you would be able to sit in silence anyways because your brain never shuts off.

Realizing that you are going to be late makes it worse. You start crying and can’t stop. Thoughts are flowing and capturing your brain. You tell yourself, “I am going to be fired,” “Everyone is going to be so mad and upset with me,” “I shouldn't even go. There is no way that I can walk in there late now." Your brain is convincing you that there is no way in hell that you can go to work now that you are going to be a good 10 minutes late. You know that it is only 10 minutes but that doesn't matter to you because it is already set in stone in your head that it is absolutely the end of the world. Nothing can change it now.

Eventually, you get ready and take your medication which annoys you. The envy that you have for people who can be themselves without taking drugs is unspeakable. You often find yourself wondering what your life would be like if it didn’t revolve around a single pill. You soon arrive to work. You ended up being only about five minutes late.

However, your medication hasn't kicked in yet and you end up sitting in your car for another 10 minutes because you cannot physically get yourself to get out and walk into the building. Your mind has convinced you that you have done something horrible and your illness has taken over your body. You are terrified to go into work and make yourself even later by remaining in the car for fifteen minutes.

Again, you start crying and your body starts to heat up. But then, you finally get the courage to walk into work and start your day. Your boss gives you a look of concern and you send a mental prayer to yourself hoping that she won’t come ask you what is wrong. You hope that she will just move on and let you be.

Somehow you manage to get through the day at work and head home. You walk in the front door and something sets you off. The best way that I have found to explain this — it’s like a light switch in your brain, it turns on and off as it pleases, and suddenly when it does you’re not the same person. Your friend texts you and asks when she should come pick you up so you can go shopping. You and she had made these plans about two weeks ago and they sounded great at the time. You decide that you can no longer go because your day has drained you and all you want to do is sleep. Your friend doesn’t understand and she gets super upset with you and it creates a huge fight. You can’t even find the way to explain how you are feeling to her because you don’t even know yourself. It is the most frustrating thing. This is why you hate making plans in advance like all your friends like to do. You hate it because the plans will sound good at the time and you’ll have all intentions on doing whatever it is they’re asking, only hoping that you will feel good that day.

So, you go and lay in your bed with your friend on your mind and you feel terrible. You feel that now that your friend is mad at you that you have lost her. You feel that she is now going to drop you like all the others. You start to go into depression mode. A major stem of anxiety is depression. It is almost like once you’re diagnosed with anxiety you’re automatically considered depressed. However, that is not the case for everyone.

It is now around 9 at night and you are trying to fall asleep but your mind will not shut off. It makes it near impossible. You are thinking about your friend and what your day is going to be like tomorrow. You are worried because she hasn’t texted you or replied to any of your texts after the fight that you had earlier. Your start to think about your relationships with your friends like you do almost every night. You realize that none of them are very stable and that is solely because of you. Your friends don’t understand what it is like to be you. They don’t understand how on some days you are tip toeing around your anxiety and are doing your best not to wake up the monster that is inside of you. This makes it extremely hard for you to open up to your friends which makes them extremely frustrated and leaves you feeling even worse.

You continue to lay there thinking and cannot take the fact that your friend is upset with you so you have to text her multiple times and apologize (even though you physically couldn't go out). You know that you cannot go to sleep until things are right again. Sometimes that results in an all-nighter. Of course, there are those friends that have seen you at your best and at your worst and have always stuck around. You cannot even begin to explain just how thankful that you are for them. You know that you are not an easy person to deal with so you are beyond thankful for those people.

After your mind driving you crazy and after finally working things out with your friend you fall asleep. Being asleep is one of the most amazing things. it is so good that you don’t even want to wake up in the morning and turn your mind on. But it just has to happen and you have to find ways to deal with it.

You wake up the next morning and you get ready, take your medication, and head down to your favorite coffee shop. You have found that coffee is your blessing. However, it sometimes can be a curse too. Before you order coffee you have to assess how you are feeling that day. On good days, it has the same effect on you that it would for anyone else. On bad days, it will cause difficulty breathing and make the feelings even worse. On those days you choose to stick to tea and keep moving forward and hope that tomorrow is better. Thankfully today is a good day. So you order a vanilla latte and get started on your day. You just hope that it will continue.

My name is Corbyn. I am an 18-year-old college student and I suffer from Anxiety. This day that I just described to you was my day last Friday. Hopefully, this gave you an insight on what it is like to truly have anxiety. It is a lot more than just being stressed out and I feel that the world needs to realize that.