Know that feeling you get in your stomach right when the roller coaster makes its dive off the peak? The hitch you feel right under your chest? That feeling that makes you say “Let’s go on again”? What if that feeling never went away?

Imagine walking around your house on a Friday night, your friends just texted you and asked if you wanted to go out for drinks, and that feeling comes up. The hitch in your chest gets tighter and tighter until you feel you’re being suffocated. Now imagine feeling this same thing every single day. Whether you’re going to class or the store or even over a friend’s house and this feeling threatens to suck the air right out of your lungs. Suddenly the roller coaster isn’t as fun, suddenly the roller coaster becomes the scariest thing in the world; suddenly you stop riding roller coasters in fear of meeting that feeling again. Eventually you tell your friends that you can’t go out because you’re having an anxiety attack, they ask you what you’re afraid of and you can’t answer it because you don’t know. Eventually you stop considering going out with them at all, and they stop asking you why. Finally, there comes a time when they stop asking you to go out with them at all.

The worst part about the anxiety isn’t that it prevents you from being yourself, because it does, but it’s the slow transformation you make; you become the anxiety. That hitch in your chest never goes away and instead of being anxious about one or two things, you’re anxious about everything. Eventually, everything becomes difficult and nothing seems easy; getting out of bed becomes the biggest accomplishment of your day. Even leaving your house becomes difficult and you stop making an effort to even try. The hardest part about living with anxiety is giving up things you love the most.

Remember how I said that over time your friends stop asking you to go out because they know you’ll come up with an excuse? Well, what if you couldn’t work or go to school or even drive a car? It’s not that you can’t work- you’re a fast learner and a great people-person- but every time you see a large group of people or you get a bunch of questions at once your whole body shuts down; you freeze, your heart beats faster and faster, and you can’t breathe. You love school, you’re intelligent, your professors love you, and you enjoy your program but every time you sit down the room gets smaller and smaller and the people get louder. You’re a great driver and you’ve been doing it for years but every time you get behind the wheel you tense up and feel sick, suddenly every move you make could result in an accident and the thought of leaving your drive way is impossible. These are just a few of the things that are suddenly impossible when you have anxiety, there are tons of things that just become too much.

Now, you’ve imagined all of that, you may not understand it fully, but hopefully you tried to picture it. Now, I’m going to tell you that none of it is real, it’s all in your head, it’s just an excuse, you are lazy, and unmotivated.

Truth is, you’re none of those things, neither is a person who suffers from anxiety. Yet, we live in a world where the word anxiety is used so casually and nonchalantly. We live in a world where if you aren’t working or going to school or leaving your house every day that you’re lazy. I’ve had family members tell me what I feel every day is fake, that I’ve made it all up, that if I put it out of my mind it’d go away. What’s terrifying is after a while you start to agree, you actually believe that what you’re going through is fake, it’s all in your head. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve told my therapist that I wish I wasn’t lazy because than I could stop pretending that my anxiety is real.

The sad fact is, anxiety isn’t a good enough excuse for people but it’s an even lesser excuse for those who actually suffer from it. How many times has someone told you that they can’t do something because of anxiety? Hell, it took me four years to even tell my best friend that I go through it. To sit by yourself and think that you have a disability, something that’s recognized by medical professionals and treated with medication makes you sick. There are thousands of people who go through much worse, people who can’t be treated, and here I am with anxiety. So, instead of putting ourselves in situations where anxiety may come up we shut ourselves off from the world. For me, I quit my job, quit school, stopped making plans or appointments, and cut my friends off. It feels great, you don’t have to go out and face situations that elicit an anxiety attack, you’re safe in your home with nobody to bother you or tell you it’s made up, but it’s lonely. It’s sad, you’re now sitting by yourself every day all day, and the anxiety finds you even in those moments. Sometimes, it’s even worse in those moments, you now fear that you’ll never leave the house again, you’ll never get a job again, you’ll never get that degree and you’ll never make any friends.

Now, for the ultimate truth.

To the people who tell you that it’s laziness, fake, made up, that it’s in your head or just another lame excuse, thank you. It's people like that who make this journey through debilitating fear worth it. Every day when you wake up and ask yourself what the point of getting out of bed is, remember that person who told you to suck it up and deal with it. They make it worth it because it pisses me off. It doesn’t become about trying to prove these people wrong, it becomes about doing it for myself. If you don’t go through this you’ll never truly understand it and that’s fine because it’s not about making someone understand. It’s about loving this part of yourself, it’s about these people casting you down and you knowing that they are wrong. It’s about questioning no part of your mind and knowing that this is who you are and that it’s okay.

I remember that I can’t predict the future and I can’t change the past. I remember what my life looked like five years ago, when I couldn’t talk to my parents about it because I was afraid they wouldn’t understand, when I cared about what my friends thought every time I took a Xanax just to get through a night at the movies with them.

I know that life is bigger than anxiety and that one day I’ll find a way to stand up and push through it. I also know that one day that hitch in my chest will be a reminder that, even though I’m feeling anxious, I’ve gotten through this all before and I can do it again. That one day the roller coaster feeling won’t be so tight, that I’ll be able to breathe a little bit more each time it comes up.

Lastly, I know that when I wake up tomorrow or when a person who deals with anxiety finishes reading this that nothing is going to change. Because life doesn’t work that way. Anxiety doesn’t work that way. I’ll never be free of anxiety but one day I’ll be able to coexist with it. Right now, I’m being pushed off the peak of that roller coaster, the decent to the bottom is painful but I know that one day I’ll be able to fly off that peak on my own terms and enjoy the ride.

I know that one day I’ll be able to say “Let’s go on again.”