There are different kinds of anxiety that people tend to experience; anxiety produced from bottling up emotions and never letting others in, anxiety formed by attention seekers who sit and wait for people to pity them, and mentally healthy people who just have anxiety in certain situations when something happens to cause it. Myself, I bottle up my emotions until I cannot handle it anymore. Many people say that they are anxious people; however, if they were to wake up every day like I feel, they would not call it anxiety.

I have anxiety, and when I say I have anxiety I don't mean that when I have a test the next day I get anxious because I have not studied. No, when I say I have anxiety I mean that I wake up every day with the fear of having to meet new people or do something that is out of my regular schedule. Often times, I am sitting in my room, doing homework, and all of a sudden I can't breathe, and I start shaking.

This is how I live my life: dependent on my medications, my security blanket, and my emotional support animal, Daisy. Anxiety traps you, it pulls you in and gives you irrational ideas in your mind that you know can't be true. In that moment, however, it is the most real thing in the world. My first semester of college, I could not make it all the way through my classes, and my friends know that that is not how I am. I was a straight A student all through my life; I graduated high school with a 4.05 GPA. The anxiety sucked me in, and I believed the lies. I had a rough four-month period of figuring out medications, counseling, and homework. However, I had to first humble myself to go get help. Something I had always struggled with in my life. I was raised independent and thought that asking for help made me weak; on the contrary, it made me strong. It was accepting that something is wrong and I need help to get better.

Anxiety is a real mental illness. Not something to be glamorized and put on a pedestal. If you know someone who seriously has anxiety and has to live every day with that burden, then you would likely not try to label yourself as anxious; you would see how it tears us apart. We are bound to the chain, and it is extremely difficult to break loose, but with help, you can. I would never wish anyone to have anxiety because I understand that it is serious and not something to be joked about in a way that makes us feel like it is our fault for having this illness. People who have never had anxiety constantly tell me, "Just stop. It is a mind thing." Don't you think I know that? I don't want this, but I have anxiety; and I am working through it with my friends and sisters, my support group.

Anxiety does NOT own me. Anxiety does NOT define me.