From about the age of ten, I had heard of a disorder called anxiety. It ran in my family, and I knew some of the symptoms of the big, bad, scary disorder. After I moved back to America from England when I was eleven, and started my enrollment in a school in Illinois, I started noticing these symptoms in myself. It wasn’t until early 2013 that I finally came to terms with the glaring reality.

I had anxiety.

The event that set off this cataclysmic realization was on the way to my locker after Literature Arts class. I had a stack of meticulously color coded index cards clutched in my hand as I tried valiantly to elbow my way through the crowd towards my locker. I was a measly seventh grader, who had a locker that was so far from the front doors, I was typically one of the last students in the building. As I made my way through the masses, a tall, brawny eighth grader knocked into me, sending me to the ground, and worst of all, it knocked the notecards out of my hand.
The bell had rung and I had a bus to catch, but as I brushed the hair from my eyes, I could see the index cards scattered across the dirty linoleum. I knew I had to gather them and reorganize them on the way home, I still had to catch the bus, but I knew that I was running short on time to get to it. Any normal person would have brushed the incident off, but I sat on the floor frozen, tears pouring down my face. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t gather my thoughts or wits, much less my cards. Time seemed frozen, I was stuck in the icy grip of a full-fledged panic attack. The fear choked me, stealing my air, wrapping my tighter and tighter until my chest ached and burned. I don’t know how long I sat on that dirty floor. It could have been seconds, it could have been minutes, but someone eventually helped me off the floor. They waited next to me on the grimy tiles until the sobs wracking my body had subsided, and then they helped me to my feet. I never saw them again or learned their name. I made my way through the labyrinth of hallways to the bus lot, and saw my group of friends standing on the blacktop. I knew everything would be okay; the bus had been late.

Fast forward to two years later, July 2015. I took a trip to China with my church youth group, and was not ready for the crushing amount of pressure the trip put me under. The amount of drama between all my friends was overwhelming, and I was caught in the middle. On a muggy July evening, on a street in the middle of a Chinese city, I felt the familiar fingers of panic settle around my throat, and begin the ever increasing squeeze. People shouted all around me, fighting over the most petty things while I struggled to gasp for air. My head was swimming and my heart was thundering in my chest; I couldn’t hear the shouts anymore, not over the deafening echo in my ears. My legs began moving, quickly, in shaking movements back to our hotel. I made it down the street before I couldn’t carry myself anymore. I leaned against a cool metal signpost and tried to catch my breath. I turned my head to see my friends still fighting at the far end of the road. I stared at them until one of them looked back at me. He glanced at the group, back to me again, and started to walk towards me. He hugged me and awkwardly patted my back, which I knew was the highest form of affection he could show me. Wordlessly, I nodded. It would get better. If not then, I knew it would be better soon.

GAD is not the scary, bad disorder it was once thought to be. Not only by the niche group of teenagers who romanticize or even sexualize mental illnesses, but by the majority of people. Mental disorders are not, to me at least, a burden, looming and lurking waiting to wreak havoc. It is a constant challenge, a new hurdle to clear with flying colors.