I'm currently sitting in the corner of my school's library, avoiding eye contact and trying to eat my lunch without any of the librarians noticing. But I'm grateful that this isn't like last week's lunch... Sitting in a bathroom stall, trying not to make any noise as groups of friends come in and out of the girl's room, chatting and giggling all the way. Too scared to face the noisy lunchroom, it was much easier to take refuge in the dingy bathroom, just me and a floor full of dust and stray pubes. Glamorous, I know.
This morning during Child Development I found myself completely overwhelmed with anxiety, so I escaped out of the classroom and went to the nurse for a PRN and some quiet time. Sitting by the window in that nurse's office, I had my headphones in. I was listening to a meditation app called Calm, trying to soothe my unrelenting nerves. As my mind wandered away from the guided meditation, I found myself upset over how difficult school is for me.
When you see the movies about high school, it rarely ever portrays what it's like for someone with severe anxiety. How everything is difficult. How you'll spend an entire week worrying about a presentation you have on Friday, and then you'll spend the entire weekend afterwards worrying about how you did. The movies portray easy classes, fun parties, interesting drama--everything that high school is not for a lot of people. But the movies aren't what get me down. It's the fact that everyone else seems to be coping with school just fine. No one else is sitting with me in the nurse's office, knees shaking and heart racing. I don't see everyone else running to the bathroom when the cafeteria is too much, or becoming so overcome with anxiety that I can't answer a teacher's question. I don't hear about other people ruining their weekend because they're worried about the coming school week.
But then again, I don't talk about these things. I don't discuss how much school stresses me out. I don't talk about how I'm close to having a panic attack right now because we're getting our quizzes back next period. And if I'm not talking about it, I doubt the majority of other school anxiety sufferers are talking much either.
So here's a message to all of my fellow anxious students. You are not alone. It may seem like everyone else has their life together, but chances are, they don't. Anxiety rules my life, but most people don't know about it. Chances are, if other people around you are suffering, they're hiding it too. You're not the only one sitting in the bathroom stall, feeling like the walls are closing in around you as you feel a panic attack coming on. You're not the only one who comes home from school and breaks down because it was so overwhelming. You're not the only one who feels like their life is ending because you got something lower than a 90. High school is a terrible experience for people with mental illness. But it's temporary. It feels like it's going to last forever, but it won't. I'm trying to remind myself that. Today I got a bad grade on a test, and I completely broke down. I went to guidance, sobbing and shaking, and I was so embarrassed. I didn't want everyone looking at me, I wanted to shrink into a hole, I wanted to disappear. So I'm trying my very best to remember that a grade is just a grade. It shouldn't dictate my happiness. It shouldn't destroy me like it does. I need to let it roll off my back and just keep walking. I'll let you know how it goes.
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