What even is anxiety? It is specific psychiatric disorders that involve extreme fear or worry. Every day thousands of people deal with anxiety disorders. Some are severe and some are minor. At the end of the day, those people are suffering and it is not fair.

Every day they deal with constant worries about anything and everything, they avoid any social situations, always having random panic attacks, avoidance of certain objects or people, and recurring nightmares or flashbacks or emotional numbness.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America’s (ADAA) “Understand the Facts of Anxiety Disorders and Depression is the First Step.” States that forty million (eighteen percent) people suffer from an anxiety disorder a year. They also explain that only ⅓ of people receive treatment. Lastly, they remark that eight percent of children and teens experience an anxiety disorder before twenty-one. I’m one of them.

I am a thirteen-year-old girl suffering from anxiety. Most people think, “Well she’s too young to even know what it is and what even does.” But am I? I do not think so. I wake up at 7:15 every morning for school, I wake up with my stomach in a knot. I have these crazy small butterflies roaming around in there. They never go away. I get them because I am terrified to go to school. I am scared to be judged, yelled at, to fail classes, to have a breakdown, to lose friends. I am scared.

School has always been a place where I felt satisfied and safe. Most people hate school, I personally do; it was the one place I was delighted to go to. I got to see the people that made me feel comfortable. Nowadays I am being judged and yelled at. I have skipped many days due to feeling too anxious to go.

Many others and I, myself deal with it every day: I deal with it at home, at friends’ house, and anywhere in public. I am always anxious to go anywhere at this point because I am scared someone is going to judge me or yell at me. I avoid going places because I do not feel permitted there.

Things need to change, and those with disorders deserve to get treatment and should. The things we go through every day is the worst feeling ever.