I've heard people describe their anxiety as they feel like they’re drowning or digging themselves into a hole deeper than they are tall. Everybody has their own experience. 

Mine feels like I'm suffocating. I walk into a crowded room and lose my ability to speak, or breathe. I feel like my legs and arms are heavy. I can hardly move. I try to talk to people and I feel my heart rate speed up and blood rushes to my ears so I can hardly hear my own words. I fumble over my words, I stutter, and I get embarrassed. When I tell people I’m a public speaker they say, “oh, so you’re confident? you don’t have stage fright?”

Speaking to a panel of four judges is completely different from walking into a crowd of my peers who can shape the way I feel about who I am. 

I criticize and degrade myself to a point where I feel worthless. My brain is constantly fighting battles with itself. Overthinking and breaking down every single thing I've ever said, or done. I'm constantly trying to be perfect. Constantly trying to seem like I am okay. Every single night I fight a battle with the same person. She puts her hand over my mouth and nose so I can't breathe and she whispers in my ear, telling me I'm not worth anything. I hurt everybody and everything that I love and nobody who does that deserves to be loved. I try to claw, I try to scream, I try to kick, I try my best to fight my way free. I fight this battle with her, every single night, all alone, while laying in my bed staring at the glittered popcorn ceiling. Nobody comes when I break free for a split second to scream for help, nobody comes when she cries out because of the pain I've inflicted upon her. Nobody comes because she’s not real. She's just another voice in my head. Every single night, she wins the battle. She takes away my ability to breathe while I fight for my life. Every single night I stare up into the eyes of myself as I lose consciousness and fade into nothingness, death. The eyes I stare up into are my own eyes. Nobody else’s. Mine. I am the person who is inflicting mental and physical pain upon myself and I don't know how to stop. Every single night a piece of me and who I really am dies because I don't know how to be myself and be happy without worrying about other people's thoughts about me.