You Are Not Alone

Your heart begins to speed up. You hear yourself snapping at your loved one. You open the fridge to find something sweet. You scroll through memes to calm down. You try to cancel the plans. You avoid picking up the phone. You are anxious, and you know it. But you are not alone.

I'll repeat that: you are NOT alone.

I've been there: palms sweating, heart racing, voice shaking. Everything from panic attacks to a mild niggling feeling in the back of my head preventing me from truly feeling peace.

Anxiety knows no bounds: it can happen to anyone. Sometimes it creeps up during a stressful time in life, and sometimes it's triggered by traumatic events, or even a small thing that doesn't seem like a big deal at the time, but then, there you are having a panic attack at 8 in the morning. Yuck.

My niggling anxiety started when I was young but truly came to a head in college. I had always had four deep rooted fears: I feared what other people thought of me, I feared disappointing my parents, I feared losing friendships, and I feared failure.

And you know what happened to me in college? Everything I feared.

All of my greatest fears came true: I lost my good reputation (a lot of people still believe lies about me), I disappointed my parents to the point of total breakdown, my friends became distant, and I FAILED. I failed hard at a lot of things, in college and after.

As my fears came true, I found myself drowning in anxiety. I couldn't answer calls from unknown numbers, I couldn't check my email, I found myself constantly cancelling or avoiding time with people I didn't know very well, and staying in more nights than going out.

Please remember this:

No matter how good someone's life appears, everyone's got something they're dealing with.

So what do you do when everything you feared happens? You have a choice: you can give up on life, or you can fight back. For awhile I thought about giving up, but then I decided no: I'm going to live my God-given life and I'm going to fight.

And that's what I want to share with you all. I'm still here, and I'm still kicking! Probably more than I ever have before. I'm not perfect, and I still have bad days, but I have grown a lot, and can't wait to tell you all about it.

Stay tuned my beloved readers.

Love,

Mrs. Midwest