Personal Narrative: My Anxiety

That was the phrase that had been assaulting my ears for the last half an hour. Although it wasn’t odd that someone was telling me that specific phrase, this time it was different. My grandmother, whom I thought had understood my problems, had just proven to me that she actually didn’t. At the age of 12, I was heartbroken.

I used to see the world behind a lens of insecurity. When you are not comfortable in your own skin, it affects every decision you make. What changed me and saved me from this, however, was my activity in drama productions. I got a very small role in a play during my freshman year, and that prompted me to get more involved over the next few years. I got to learn from upperclassmen and got to see how everything fits into place if everyone works hard for the outcome. During my last two years at a different high school, I sought out more backstage work because the department badly needed it. All my experiences in drama productions have been positive, and all have helped me develop a healthier self image that enables me to focus my energy on other people, instead of myself.

Living with anxiety is a battle everyday. I wake up and I’m not sure if today will be good or bad. It can start out good, but the next thing I know, I’m having a panic attack. The world around me starts to cave in, and the noise I hear becomes static; it’s as if I’m being swallowed whole. Suffering from a panic attack is incredibly embarrassing. Nobody understands what I’m going through, they all think it’s in my head or that I’m being dramatic. What they don’t understand is that, it’s a real problem. Just like any other illness, anxiety is paralyzing; so are panic attacks. There are days I don’t want to get out of bed because I’m afraid that today is the day everything will end, so it’s just safer to stay in bed. My anxiety is unpredictable,

If I were a famous YouTube sensation, my most watched video would be called: My Depression and Anxiety Story. When I was a Sophomore in high school, I went through a long period of time where I felt utterly miserable and alone all of the time. I would want to share my story with everyone, so they would know that even the most unlikely person can go through hardships. This is my story.

This feeling was unusual because as a youngster, I spent most of my childhood going on acting auditions and

I have always struggled with anxiety. It has always been an issue, even since elementary school. In some ways it has aided me, such as forming me into a great student. I often thought that nothing would be worse than turning in an unfinished or late assignment, so therefore I made sure they were done at least a few days in advance, if not a week. In others, it has been very harmful, like getting sick with worry. I actually got pneumonia from final exams sophomore year (and bronchitis freshman year). After that, I resolved to more or less force myself into not worrying. By now, I thought I was pretty successful - I actually didn’t do this paper a in advance. That’s right, I was typing this on Thursday. Then I started keeping a dream journal,

I was sitting in a blue chair in the kitchen, confused. My brother was sitting to my right. I looked into my dad’s eyes; they were pained and full of sadness. He started speaking to us, but I only remember hearing the last sentence: “Dadi has a terminal neurological condition, called PSP.” Shock rushed through my body as I processed his words. Every memory of my grandparents, living life to the fullest within their quaint house in the Pittsburgh suburbs, rushed through my mind as I tried to hold on to the past.

When you told the class about our assignment and how apart of it was going to be not using our phones for 6 hours, I felt a rush of anxiety jolt through my body as you said those words. I know that sounds terrible that I physically could feel anxiety in my body after hearing that, but it’s true, I was anxious and honestly a little annoyed. My phone is my lifeline, basically it’s like a baby to me. I have it with me for almost twenty-four hours a day and have it right beside me when I sleep.

I anxiously watched the clock. 2:57, 2:58, 2:59, 3:00; time to text Joey so he can pick me up. In roughly about 4 hours, I’m going to be a sobbing mess, but trust me, I’ll be okay. you’ll see why later.

When I was in my freshman year of high school, I remember my friend, Maddie, have an anxiety attack. She was frantic, couldn’t catch her breath, and dizzy. I didn’t know how to help her. I didn’t know what was wrong. I tried to calm her down the best I could. She eventually calmed down, and went home. A few days, she told me that she had bipolar disorder and one of her symptoms was that she suffered from anxiety. I thought it was a joke, I have some rough days and issues being decisive, that doesn’t mean I’m bipolar or that I have anxiety. I thought she was being overdramatic, as I knew Maddie to be sometimes.

Just to warn you I cannot write (as you can probably tell) but these "creative rants" are just how I express myself and get my feelings out.

The first time I had a panic attack I thought I was dying. My mind started spinning, my vision got blurry and the lights in my room began to burn my eyes. My breathing was labored, I felt like my lungs were going to collapse, my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. My limbs went numb, my mind wouldn’t stop racing, too many thoughts were going through my mind, I couldn’t control myself any longer. I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear myself. Everything was silent except for the steady beating of my heart.

I got bullied as a child which I think contributed to my anxiety today. I always knew I had anxiety, but I thought it was rather minor, and that I was just shy. What I didn’t know was that it would get so bad to the point where I would have an anxiety attack, but after this exposure to a more severe attack it seemed to have gotten more and more relentless. The day I had an anxiety attack was a day that I would reconstruct the way I think about myself and my anxiety, and how it affects me. From then on, my anxiety has held me back the sense that it hindered my social life, and even when I had friends I felt like I could never bring myself be myself around them.

For over a year I failed to listen to my body, soon I would come to find out that I was extremely sick. In one emergency room visit I had learned that I had miscarried, got pneumonia, but the most shocking was that I, at age 23, had stage II Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Within that year it had become harder to breath; I could feel my lung fill and ‘pop’ around something, that something was my lymph node. A lymph node is regularly the size of a lima bean, so you would think I would have noticed its’ growth into this fist sized thing that my oncologist showed me in scans. At the time I had thought of all the times I could have gone to the doctor, but out of fear, talked myself out of going to seek medical care. Why would I want to