I was always shy as a kid, shy as in hiding behind my mom at family functions and crying in class when I got embarrassed. Even with this knowledge that I’ve always been shy, my anxiety was much different. It started small, like a seed of an invasive plant, but it would take over my brain, wrapping its vines around me, planting its roots in my mind and controlling my every move.

It started in elementary school, but it would get worse as I grew. I would’ve rather gone completely unnoticed during my middle school years, I wished to become invisible so I’d never have to worry again. My first panic attack was in 6th grade at a school dance, my friends had left me on my own by accident. One of them came up behind me and scared me as a joke. I remember my throat closing up, trying to breathe in but not being able to, being stuck in this state of sucking in air, never getting enough to fully breathe, eventually finding the air to push out “I can’t breathe” in a broken voice. I sat outside the dance alone while I waited for my dad to pick me up, and I never went again

Some of my anxiety was semi-warranted, kids on the bus took pictures of me and called me a witch, but it never went any further than that. When quarantine hit, that’s when it got awful. Staying home for so long made it easy to get by, so I stopped going anywhere. When we went back in person in my eighth grade year we were put into cohorts, stuck all day with people I barely knew. It was so much to just make it through the day, I would go home and just sob about how awful I felt. One day I came home and my mom had asked me about my day.

I just started crying, trying my best to hide it, “I just can’t anymore mom. It's too much.”

“What's too much? Living?” my mom responded, concern evident in her eyes.

“No, just school. I’m completely alone! Do you know how hard it is to go to school knowing everyone hates me! It is so hard to exist everyday!”

I yelled everything I’d kept hidden, all the things I’d cried about everyday after school, I let it spill like a waterfall. Losing all of my carefully held secrets.

When highschool hit the seed had fully flourished, the vines invading my brain and clouding my eyes. I was barely able to participate or talk in class without my face going red and tears lining my eyes. Wearing a mask was able to help me hide from the world, treating everyone I didn't know as an enemy and not letting them get the better of me. My mom decided I needed to go to therapy. When I started I thought it was stupid, how could talking about my anxiety make it any better. But I went, and I tried, for six months I worked on myself. And for those months I gave the same excuse, other people’s opinions matter because they’re better than me, because I don't fit in with them. Finally she asked the same question she asked every time.

“Why does it matter?” and I thought about it, long and hard, before answering,

“It doesn’t.” I said finally. I wish I could've realized it sooner, that these other people were more complex than I was giving them credit for, that I was assuming who they were. I wish I could've realized sooner not everyone is an enemy, that I’m not different from the rest of my peers, and I’m not any “worse” than them. I wish I could've known earlier that I deserved to take up space.

© Charlie. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.