I have struggled with anxiety for a little over 15 years. It started when I was about five years old and would get a nervous pit in my stomach in the mornings before school because my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. In my kindergarten-aged mind cancer meant that she could die at any moment and I thought I would come home from school one day and she would not be there anymore.

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As I grew up, my anxiety grew up with me and continued to get worse every day. My anxiety hit its highest point when I became severely depressed. My personal life was partially to blame, but for the most part, I wanted nothing more than to be perfect because of something that had been said to me years before. All in all, my anxiety stems from my academics and snakes its way through all of the other aspects of my life.

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I wake up anxious, worried I slept through class or work, and it grows throughout the day into a monster that simply will not leave me alone. Even when I sleep, my anxiety finds me there, waking me up at three in the morning, gasping for air. It takes away my appetite and forces me to set reminders to eat even though the very thought of food makes me feel sick.

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Anxiety has blessed me with the inability to communicate. Something as simple as saying hello to someone in passing is complete torture, but at the same time, I cannot stop taking because in my mind no one can talk about me. Anxiety has me thinking that every time a phone goes off alerting someone of a text, it is something negative about me. I have lost an incredible amount of friends and have strained relationships with family members because of my anxiety. Anxiety has been ruining my life for years. Actually, if my anxiety were a person it would be able to vote this November.

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I have tried getting help, but ultimately I stop seeing every therapist and counselor because my anxiety convinces me that they actually do not like and that I am just wasting their time. I am at the calmest I have ever been in my life, but I am still a complete ball of nerves. The only thing I can do at this point to help myself is to live with it. I have accepted that it will always be there and just need to live my life around it. I think one of the biggest things I took from my anxiety is understanding and patience. Every day I give up on my own mental health a little bit more, but I have also become more and more understanding of those around me. I have become so much more patient with people because I have finally started connecting the dots and acknowledging that, even though there is a solid chance that everyone may hate me, they are all living with their own struggles whether it is visible or not.