If it's one thing I can't stand, it's when people over-exaggerate their feelings. As I sit in my school's cafe area, I overhear a conversation between two girls around my age, while one says to the other, "I literally had a panic attack, I couldn't find my phone!"

No. You didn't have a panic attack. Until you're unable to move, your heart is racing, you can't breathe, and you feel like you're having a heart attack, you have no right to say that.

I'm sitting and writing this instead of completing several other assignments I could be doing, but I can’t seem to muster up the strength to do so. I can’t seem to shake the horrid physical ailments that accompany my wintertime depression, such as the pressure in my chest and my constant struggle to get a good breath in. I sit here biting my nails and tapping my leg in an effort to self-soothe, but I can’t help but envy my peers that surround me. Little do these people know that I’m currently at battle with myself in an effort to calm down.

Throughout the years, I’ve mastered the art of displaying a calm, cool, and collected outer appearance while simultaneously attempting to quiet my inner demons. By the time my heart rate climbs down to a slow, steady beat, and my hyperventilation returns to normal breaths, it will be time to go to my next class and all I will have accomplished is writing this article.

About a year ago, I would’ve considered this an epic failure. My lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression has been absolutely taxing on my body, mind and soul. It has been twenty strenuous years of a constant inner battle, and yet, I still feel unaccomplished. Not many seem to understand this ongoing war inside of me, and those who do seem to understand become annoyed whenever I attempt to talk about it (Or maybe that’s just the anxiety talking). Little do my professors know that I’m not simply skipping class, but I am struggling to breathe normally as a result of my panic attacks, and I had to miss their class to lay down so that I didn’t pass out.

About a year ago, I would’ve stayed in bed as a defense mechanism against my crippling anxiety. About a year ago, I would’ve scurried home like a terrified little rodent at the first taste of uneasiness. About a year ago, the thought of being three and a half hours away from my family would’ve sent me into a spiraling downfall of self-doubt; but now, my ongoing maturation has given me the strength to preserver. I have discovered new coping mechanisms, and expanded my personal limits.

I look up from my laptop at my peers again, but this time, I’m looking through a new set of eyes. I know that I am not the only one who suffers in silence. Anxiety takes many forms; It could be the girl to my right who is erratically twisting her earrings while doing math homework. Or it could be the boy to my left who is simultaneously tapping his pen while shaking his knee. It would be selfish and ignorant to believe that I am the only one. For all I know, the twisty-earring girl or the pen-tapping boy with the red oversized head phones could be feeling the exact same way as I do. I never would've thought that I would even make it to college, but I did. I never would've thought that I would go from crying in a high-school bathroom stall to successfully completing a ten-page college essay (cited in APA format of course). I have proven to myself repeatedly that my inner demons will not hold me back from my accomplishments.

To those of you who have used phrases such as, "I always keep my room clean, I'm so OCD about it", or, "I had a panic attack when I lost my phone." Just keep in mind what you're actually saying, and that these are real mental illnesses that ruin people's lives.

And to those of you who believe you are suffering alone, I am here to tell you that you’re not. I've been there, and in fact, I'm still there now.