I sit in my cold, metal chair when I hear a voice coming from the front of the class. My name was called to answer a question. Everything starts to feel like it's moving in slow motion as everyone turns their head in my direction and stares daggers at me. My body starts to have a meltdown from the fear of what goes on in the minds of those staring at me. My stomach starts to hurt, the pain causes me to freeze in my chair. My heart rate starts to rise to the point where my heart feels like it's going to jump out of my chest. My whole body feels hot as warm sweat starts to drip down the inside of my arm. I look down at the paper in front of me, the paper is blurry from the warm tears that fill in my eyes. The words on the white paper start to blur together as everything I look at starts to suddenly spin and every sound around me is muted as my ears start to ring. As I lift the paper with a firm grip and with hands that won’t stop moving. My throat starts to tense up as I speak. The words that escape my dry mouth sound weak as it sounds like the words are jumbled together. I push through the fear as my lips start to move faster and read the words like it's a competition to see who finishes first. As I finish reading the painful words, everyone's attention is off of me as they turn their attention to the noises coming from the front of the room. 

It all started in first grade when my mean, old teacher decided to pick me to read a section of a book we were reading. I was told to come to the front of the class, the front of the class is everyone with anxiety’s worst fear of being told where to stand. Everyone in the room's eyes followed me as I walked up to the front of the room, it was as if they were programmed to do it every single time. I kept an intense focus on the book I held. If I looked up at the robots' eyes, they would stab me with daggers of more and more fear. I stood up in the front of the class, frozen like ice, not able to say a word. The teacher then became furious, I was wasting her time by not reading my page of the book. She stood in front of me with a monstrous look on her face, I gulped in fear as I was suddenly lifted off of my feet and hung over the shoulder of the monster. She slammed the door open and walked me down the hall to the principal's office. I wasn’t sure why I was there as I was put down on a bench where I was left to sit until the principal came out of her dungeon. I don’t remember what happened after I was taken into the dungeon but this is where all the anxiety started for me.

As you enter through the ear and into the brain, you end up in the mind. The eerie, dark, abyss, of the mind, is the home of the thing. The thing that I call “Anxiety”. Anxiety is a small being that lives in the mind, it never leaves. It spends its time sitting on the cold, hard floor of the mind with a large, heavy, metal ball attached to its foot, the thing that keeps it from leaving called “the fear of judgment.” The “fear of judgment” keeps Anxiety going, it allows it to spew whatever it wants to say. It makes Anxiety say things like, “you look terrible today, they will totally make fun of your outfit”, “don’t say that, they’ll think you’re weird”, and “You messed up, they’re definitely laughing at you.” Anxiety also has the power to get rid of serotonin in the mind, making the human brain lose its happiness. When Anxiety stops it, the human is overtaken by it, it never leaves the human making the human feel stuck and in need of help. When the human realizes it needs help, they shove the anxiety into the back of the mind to mute it for a little while until it breaks free and takes over the mind again.

People are wired like machines. They repeat the same routine over and over again every single day, stare at the person with their sharp dagger eyes, come up with mean thoughts about the person as they stare, laugh when the person is finished speaking, and finish off with whispering to the other people the thoughts they developed of the person. People do this when a person is put on the spot anywhere and it seems like it will never fade as we move on with time. People like to see others embarrass themselves, they use it as a way of entertainment or a way to make themself feel better than those who are struggling or have made a mistake. All a person with anxiety wants to do is avoid people but it's hard with a busy and ever-growing society. We isolate ourselves or do things to stay away from these people to not be a part of the routines they do every day. 

I wish I was able to get rid of this thing living inside of my mind permanently, it is something that affects my everyday life and prevents me from living a happy life. I have tried multiple things to try and slowly calm it down and I think I have finally found something that shows potential for helping me improve. Something I need to focus on is not caring what other people think, words shouldn’t hurt me. Being able to do the things I used to will show that I have finally met my goal which will allow me to be happier with myself because I achieved something big that most people have trouble achieving themselves.