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With revelations from Liz and her overcoming of her anxiety, I applaud her. But with mention that she has overcome such a travesty only opens up my own thoughts about my own problems with anxiety and depression. Seven long and painful years I've suffered from this disease. Shutting myself away from family... from friends. Everyone wanted to help, but I just pushed them away and thought that I was the only one who could help myself; Save myself from this.

Anxiety has stopped me on so many occasions. It causes me to think about consequences way more than I should. For every action that I take, my mind whisks off into all these possibilities of what could happen and what will happen next if I continue. And I hate it so much. I'm always jumping to conclusions about everything. I hate it. I hate it so much. It stops me. It has stopped me dead in my tracks from trying anything... anything that I may have enjoyed, anything that may have made my life different. By always thinking that I could predict what the outcome of each of my actions would be and by stopping myself from going any further with what I thought would be good for me caused me to become depressed.

Depressed about all the opportunities that I had missed out on, all the things that I could have done, but did not because my anxiety stopped me from doing so. I felt that I had missed out on so much that if this continued to persist, that I would have no reason to live anymore. If I continued to let myself be controlled by this thing that stopped me from experiencing things in life that may have changed me for the better, that I was not worthy of being alive; that I was not worthy of feeling anything because I would just jump to a conclusion about what that feeling really was and take that prediction and apply it, therefore never really feeling anything. It left me in a numb state for a long time. I hated myself. I hated myself so much for who I was and what my mind continued to do. I hated myself because I had no control over it; I had no control over these ********. I hated it. I hated myself. I continued to draw away from friends and family and any kind of help whatsoever. I was prescribed anti-depressants that didn't do anything but make me feel worse. I felt that because I was on anti-depressants that I had let myself down and that it was unnatural to try and heal my psychiatric problems with a little pink pill every ******** night. I hated myself so much that I began to injure myself anytime that was possible. I took exacto knives to my arm on numerous occasions hoping to feel something that my brain could not predict. I cut myself. I cried myself to sleep. I hated myself. I hated it. I was so upset and angry all the time. I couldn't stand to be around anyone. I began to avoid school as much as I possibly could by either feigning illness or because I threw up every morning because of my anxiety attacks. I had lost so much weight because of my vomiting. I could not talk about anything without becoming so overly emotional that I caused myself asthma attacks and anxiety attacks, leaving me with breathing problems.

I still suffer from anxiety attacks. I still have a chemical imbalance in my brain called depression. And I know deep down inside of me that there still is a hatred towards myself for missing out on life and it's bountiful opportunities. Sometimes I sit up from a couch clutching at my chest gasping for air like someone had just stomped on my lungs because I had forgotten to breathe. I'd forgotten to breathe because I was so caught up in trying to figure out what the outcome of everything was going to be. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and rush to the toilet and vomit acid and bile that burns my throat because I fear so much what lay ahead of me in that day.

Hopefully some day I can aspire to be like you, Liz. To seize life by the throat and take whatever it throws at me with grace and ease. To not try and stop things that I think are going to happen. To stop my mind from jumping to conclusions. To try and be a better person. To try and love myself. To try and change. To change for the good. And to feel better about myself and who I am.

Because change comes from within... and one must always breathe to survive.