"Was she talking badly about me?" "Why didn't he text back?"

"You're just being paranoid,” my friends say. Some call it paranoia, I call it anxiety. What is anxiety? By definition, anxiety is a mental health disorder characterized by feelings of worry, anxiety, or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one's daily activities.

I'm a hostage in my own body. There's a girl with ambition and drive trying to crawl out, but instead, she is grasped by the ankles and pulled back by the vicious claws of anxiety. What’s it like living with anxiety, you might ask. I spend hours awake at night replaying my day over and over again, reenacting every encounter I have had. I think about the chaos in the world, the homeless man I saw while driving to work. My mind attacks any chance of peace, I worry about instances that haven't even occurred yet, and probably won't. I begin to think about my family, I become nervous about my dad driving at late at night, my mom’s fibromyalgia. My dad is starting to get older, the stress of work could cause him have a heart attack. When’s the last time I gave him a hug and a kiss? Did I say, “I love you” before he left the house today? I call him, there’s no answer. I’m desperate; I listen to his voicemails.

My mom goes on a job interview, she’s been gone for a few hours and I haven’t heard from her. I start to panic, explaining to my dad and sister that mom has been gone for a while. I pull up her email account, I don’t know the password…I reset it. I begin frantically searching for the interviewer’s phone number, I can’t find it. My mind and body shift into defense mode, questioning where my mom might be, and if she is safe. My stomach is in knots; I think I’m going to throw up.

Twenty minutes passes by, she walks through the front door. She got caught up talking to the interviewer; she assures me that it’s not a big deal. I freak on her, “You couldn’t call me? I was worried about you!” I storm up to my room, stuffing my face into my pillow, I begin to cry. It’s not my mom’s fault; it’s my anxiety.

My anxiety causes a whirlpool of tragic scenarios in my head; taking a simple situation and twisting it into a tragedy. Anxiety is like a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.

Anxiety attacks have always caught me by surprise, walking into a grocery store alone, before driving back to college after a weekend spent at home, the morning before a big test.

In each and every day, I face difficulties that prevent me from living my life in a happy, healthy manner. Sure, I can pop a pill and call it a day, but I don’t like walking around like a zombie. I worry myself until my hands shake, my vision blurs, and I begin to hyperventilate. So what’s it like living anxiety, you might ask. I would say it’s like being lost in a corn maze.The corn stands as a blockade between you and the substantial life outside of it. You know there’s a way out, but you just can’t get there.

The concept of reality is one that is hard to clasp, seeing the transience in life. Looking around there is beauty everywhere: in the trees, a baby’s smile, the breeze by the ocean. You’re unable to accept the fact that one day you will wake up and it will all be gone.

What's it like living with anxiety, you might ask.

It is then that I realize, I'm not living, I'm just existing.