When I finally get home every afternoon, tired from a long day at school and an hour long train ride, my facade instantly crumbles as I walk through the door. My emotions fight my mind, my logical thoughts and my overwhelmed brain takes me to my bed to hide from life under the covers. I hear my mom calling my name, but my thoughts overpower everything and all my senses fade away. I don’t have enough energy to pretend to be fine in front of her. All of the plans that I made to get my work done early washes away like a gentle stream, until nothing is left in my mind except for my anxious thoughts. Inside, I scream.

 

You have so much work to do today and you can’t even get yourself out of bed.

 

You know that you can’t go to sleep at 2am again, you haven’t slept for more than four hours a night in the last two weeks.

 

Why is this so hard for you! JUST. GET. UP.

 

I tell myself, over and over and over again that I know that I need to get my work done. I know that I haven’t been sleeping enough. I just feel... frozen. Frozen in fear, trapped in my own body, paralyzed by the thoughts of how much of a failure I am and how I can’t seem to do anything right.

 

I try to get up but I can’t get my body to move, and suddenly I realize just how fast my heart is beating, my thoughts race through my mind too fast and before I realize, I stop breathing. Sheer panic takes over my mind and all sense gets thrown out the window as I try to regain my breath and remind my brain that I am not dying, that I will be okay. All I can feel are my hands shaking and my head aching as my lungs feel like they’re being crushed. I lay in bed, some days for an hour, other days for over four, trying to pick up my pieces and figure out how to put myself back together. The only problem is, I don’t know if I was ever whole to begin with.

 

While all of this goes on inside my head in the span of about five minutes after entering my house, to everyone else I look like I’m just laying in bed. This is a side of me, of my depression and anxiety, that people never see.