Living With Anxiety | Personal Blog

 This post will delve into some heavy subject matter. If you are easily triggered by mentions of sexual harassment/assault, please skip this. It's not my intention to make anyone uncomfortable, merely to express my own experiences in an outlet that is helpful for me. Back in September of 2021, when I was 15 years old, I started dating someone online. I will refer to them as "SO" for simplicity. They were 16, roughly six months older than me. We were both around the same mental maturity. Something I did not know about at the time was that, a fact that I would discover later, I had OSDD/DID. In simple terms, this means I have multiple distinct personalities with their own preferences and memories. It's not easy to know about something like DID at a young age. It has even taken some people 40-60 years to discover it. Something I have learned about DID is that separation in preferences means that dating becomes HARD, if not straight-up impossible. As far as I remember, th...

 This will be a bit of a different entry. For context, I am 19 and currently in college. I had to experience the entire public schooling system (besides one year of private schooling) up to this point, from Pre-Kindergarten up to my Senior year of high school. I live in the USA and have done so throughout my education. If you want an idea of the average(?) Gen Z American public schooling experience, this will be your chance to learn. Prepare yourself for a detailed recounting of some of the most hellish years of my entire life. Chapter One: Preschool (AKA Pre-K). I began preschool when I was either 4 or 5, I can't remember. I went to a school with only two teachers that educated students on how to speak basic Spanish, as well as English of course. That was the main thing I remembered about preschool education. I learned how to count to ten in Spanish and still retain the knowledge to this day: uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez. We also got the opportunit...

 I would say that all my life I have at the very least been a shy person. Over time, possibly over the course of a decade, that built into a noticeable anxiety disorder. At this point I'm a wreck. Unfortunately that has been made no better by the way people have treated me when I'm feeling anxious. All my life, especially in school, I have faced people downplaying my anxiety and criticizing me for not acting in a certain way despite my anxiety.  Before I criticize all of those who haven't treated anxiety with the seriousness I feel it deserves, I am very grateful to say there are people who do understand and sympathize with me. Notably, when I went to the dentist for a cleaning a few months ago, the hygienist noticed I was having a panic attack about having an X-ray and respectfully and patiently helped me calm down so that I could get it done. That level of respect being shown to me is a rarity, and I'm very thankful for it. Anxiety is hard to understand, and I too can...

I've noticed a bit of a pattern in the relationships that I have with others. Often, I'll meet people who I relate to and who like (or at the very least, understand/empathize with) who I am. But other times, I'll meet people who seem that way, but end up being judgmental towards me. They seem like chill people, not giving a damn about who I am or what I say. But when things get too far for them, they'll break off without warning. That has happened to me twice within the range of three years. It's hard to really understand, at least in the moment, who is in the wrong in that situation. I can empathize with those who wish to avoid judgement; they don't want to hear bad things said about them, even if not directed to them. When people talk about online artists as if they are the most retarded scum of the Earth, it hurts me a little, even if they don't specifically say my name. But, when it comes to more personal relationships, such as the two I eluded to, you h...

 I am a teenager. That means I have to slowly transition from being a child into being an adult. As impatient yet unexcited I am to become an adult, it really hasn't been sticking in my mind for more than a few seconds. Unfortunately, I still have to prepare for that moment, in which it is forced to stay in my brain for up to several hours. What's the best example of this? Driving. If you're an adult, driving is probably just a thing you do  whenever you need to go somewhere. For someone with an anxiety disorder and who has never drove more than a golf cart, it's a little bit of a different experience. Maybe you remember from when you were first learning to drive, it's a little scary. Last year, during the summer, I learned how to drive. Well, I learned the essentials on how to drive. It started with an online course where we had to spend 3 hours on an online chat learning about how to stop at a red light. After about 2 weeks, we took an exam. Despite what seemed li...