Hello, everyone. I am not really good at expressing my feelings and experiences with anxiety to other people, so i use writing as an outlet. Here is a short story i have written about how my anxiety feels to me and what are the things i experience. I wrote it when i was going through a particularly bad anxiety period, so it might seem a little dark, but i am okay now and taking things one day at a time. I am sharing this story with the hope that some of you would see yourself in it and know that you are not alone in this. Anxiety sucks and it's making life dificult, but it doesn't define us.

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Here is my story:

*Anxiety* was such a peculiar thing. It came when you least expected it and most of the time it stayed for days. It was slowly creeping in inside your body like a deadly poison. It was behind your every thought and it turned every dream in the worst possible nightmare. The worst part was that you didn’t know how to stop the spiraling cycle of self-loathing and terrifying scenarios anxiety created inside your head. The only thing you ever really knew how to do was to feed the little anxiety monster until it became a giant fear feeding demon who devoured every part of yourself until there was nothing left but tense muscles and head full of thoughts so dark that you couldn’t distinguish the reality from the anxiety. 

It was a particular difficult night for Noah. It was a stormy night, huge water drops were crashing against the window, thunders were echoing in the distance and lightnings were the only source of light coming into the room. Noah’s body was tense and his thoughts were all over the place. He was experiencing a particular bad anxiety period, where even the things that usually helped him to shut his brain off were useless. His breathing was rigid and his body was so overwhelmed that the friction between his skin and the bed sheets was slightly painful. It was a nightmare from the worst kind. Noah tossed and turned around trying to calm himself down, because the physical symptoms his anxiety was causing on his body were exhausting and he hated them. He wanted so desperately to get rid of his anxiety, he wanted his mind to be peaceful at least for a while. The ‘funny’ thing was his anxiety wasn’t triggered by some major emotionally scarring event like most people assumed when they thought of that mental illness, but this particular time it came out of thin air. His day started good, he was happy, he even had breakfast and did some things he was putting aside for weeks, he was proud of himself for the small goals he achieved that day. Then the night came and he was in his room watching a movie on his laptop when the intrusive thoughts made themselves comfortable inside his mind. He couldn’t tell if they were triggered by a particularly emotionally damaging scene from the movie, or would’ve come anyway without the movie being the catalyst. What immediately dawned on him, however, was that this time the thoughts were here to stay for more than just a few hours. 

Noah tried to fall asleep, but when you have anxiety even things as simple as falling asleep became an impossible task. His pulse was throbbing in his ears and tears were on the brink of his eyes. In times like this he felt so helpless, he felt so lost. His mind was in a constant state of war that he never started, but couldn’t stop feeding and making it bigger in the process. 

After few more hours of this torture, Noah sat up in his bed and buried his tear stained face in his palms. He wanted all of this to stop, he wanted to rest, he wanted to be able to enjoy books again, to enjoy music and life, but he couldn’t even come out of his room without a pang of anxiety piercing his heart. He screamed in his palms with everything he had just as the loudest thunder of the night echoed in the distance. 

Noah was done, he was tired and he wanted peace of mind and rest for his body and soul. He spent a few more minutes buried in his hands silently sobbing, when he suddenly stood up, put a shirt on and ran out of his room then down the stairs until he reached the hall where were his shoes. He put on the first pair that caught his eyes, opened the front door in a hurry and ran out in the rain. His body was soaking wet in seconds, but he didn’t mind. The overwhelmed feeling from before made him flinch everytime a water drop clashed against his skin. Noah looked at the sky, it was dark and cloudy just like his thoughts. He was in disarray both mentally and physically. He was lost and didn’t know how to find the right path. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to get rid of the claws of his anxiety that had left marks so deep inside of him. Noah was scared and there wasn’t a single person in his life who could understand what this terrible illness was doing to him and how bad it had gotten.