I just spent an hour, typing and deleting, paragraph after paragraph, before realizing that you can’t sum up anxiety in a few simple paragraphs. Anxiety is so, so much, it goes beyond the power of words.  It’s impossible to explain the constant  pain, the terror that holds a permanent home in my mind.

My therapist brought up about a week ago that I might have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and we did somewhat of an informal evaluation, in which I met the criteria listed. Since then, I have been (admittedly obsessively) researching GAD more and more. It shocked me how much it really made sense and resonated with me. I don’t think I have really felt calm in years. There’s always  something churning in the back of my mind.

I often find my self trying to explain this to friends, and I always get the answer “oh, yeah I’m worried about homework too,” or “yeah sure I don’t want to make my friends mad either.” Of course I‘m not saying their experience is invalid, but I keep seeing these same people able to function daily in ways I never could. 

 I spent all of last year terrified my  friends didn’t like me, and I was constantly changing up  my friend group in hopes I wold find a group I could stay in. I mentioned this just yesterday to a friend and she just shrugged and replied, “I guess I think that too, I just never act on it.” That hit hard, because what I had felt was an urgency to get out of the situation, even though the friends were completely fine and friendly. I always tried to stay, but in the end, the panic always won. The fact that my friend had also had this thought, and instead of obsessing over it and eventually  cutting herself off out of pure fear, she simply didn’t act on the thought. It sort of blew my mind that this was possible.

All of this served as a reminder that I really am alone in this. I just wish there was someone in my life that  already understood anxiety, and would be able to talk about it.