No, I’m Not Faking My Anxiety

Anxiety is drowning. It can look and feel different in everyone, but there’s one shared commonality. It sucks.

And nobody chooses it.

Nobody chooses anxiety.

When you accuse someone of exaggerating symptoms because YOU don’t get it, all you’re doing is outing yourself as a highly inconsiderate person. Trust us, we don’t sit down and calculate which mental illness we can apply to ourselves for the most sympathy. We’re not doing this because it’s trendy or cool or quirky.

How dare you think that?

Anxiety feels like walking around while wearing a weighted vest.

All senses are heightened, but not in some cool Superhero way. Just chaotic. Nervous. Hearts palpitate and palms profusely sweat. Minds race and replay worst case scenarios on a nauseating loop.

If you don’t understand anxiety, that’s okay. Nobody expects you to grasp something you’ve never experienced.

But when you take that ignorance out on someone who IS suffering, that’s unacceptable. It’s cruel. It’s just cruel.

Anxiety is waking up with a pit in your stomach for no understandable reason. Anxiety is hiding and burying parts of yourself for fear someone, someone like you, won’t get it.

When you accuse us of faking something we try so hard to keep under control, you’re highlighting WHY we try to keep it under wraps. So, we’ll retreat even more. We’ll stuff ourselves into smaller boxes, hoping others don’t feel the same way you do.

Mental illness is not an outfit we’re trying on at the mall. We aren’t testing out how it looks on us.

Far from it.

We’re trying to cope to the best of our ability and hoping no one else notices.