I can feel my heart in my throat, pounding like an angry knock at the door. My fingers, cold and pale, jittering too much to function. Tears are welling in my eyes. I want to scream, to run- anything but stay here. Yet, I can only spit out two words: “I'm Fine.” Ever since I was a little girl, I was “the quiet one”. I could not walk places by myself, I could not shake the thought of ghosts in my room and was terrified of the dark. But beneath the surface of “my childlike quirks” was a much bigger problem, a parasite, eating away at me. Anxiety. The first time I ever saw a psychologist I was 8. I told her about crying at swimming class because I was scared of the bottom of the pool. Scared a shark would come up and swallow me whole. Sadly, my swim teacher didn't exactly understand. She told me to “put my big girl pants on and swim!” I said, “that would be hard because I didn't want to get my ‘big-girl pants wet.” She was unamused at my eight-year-old logic. But still I swam. Topping up the pool with my tears. A few weeks later I broke my arm. I was running to get my swim bag and I fell over. I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened my eyes, my entire class was standing over me while I was on the ground. Some laughed, some looked concerned, yet others just thought I was in the way. I was unable to use my left wrist to push myself up. A shooting pain travelled up my shoulder like an electric shock. I truly thought I was going to die. I remember the Administration officer grabbing my wrist and yanking it around as hot tears ran down my face. She couldn't care less about a grade two falling over. She shoved an icepack onto me and sent me on my way. I remember crying all the way to the pool. I was dying for God's sake! Did my last few moments really have to be this horrendous activity? I still thank my lucky stars that my Mum was there that day. She knew I hated swimming, but something else seemed off. As I shook with agony I tried my hardest to keep my head above water. My arm sticking out to the side like a chicken wing. My teacher had told my mum that she though I might be a bit... “special”, but she never believed her. As she watched her daughter swim a lap like a magpie that had fallen out of its nest, she knew something needed to be done. According to a very kind nurse, my arm was fractured in two places. I had to take a week off school and six weeks off swimming, I was pretty thrilled. The nurse also wanted to have a word to the student teacher who rolled her eyes at me for ‘attention seeking'. But little did I know this one-week vacation would change my life forever. Because as I went through work with my Mother, she realised I wasn't as hopeless as Ms. Robinson had told her I was. I knew the answers, I smiled and had fun. That school had beaten me down and made me afraid. She pulled me out of that school and sent me to a public school. I was put in smart classes and actually had fun. It was great. But still, a festering darkness sat in the pit of my stomach. Let's jump forward to high school, when people started realising my ‘shyness' may be more complicated than it seems. I was packing my bag when I couldn't find my jazz music. I started shaking and crying as I imagined the ensemble conductor losing his shit at me. I didn't need more reasons to suck. My mum hugged me tight and kept saying ‘it's just high school band', but that didn't sink through. It was like my brain was an amplifier and someone turned the ‘panic' level up to ten. But this pattern repeated. Once it was because I lost my school badge, once because my friend texted me that she wasn't coming to school but then I couldn't stop. Every. Single. Day. My psychologist gave me some exercises to do, but they did not help. I still don't see how counting red thing around me would have stopped. I mean what did she think would happen? Me just lying on the floor in tears and then being totally fine because ‘oh look there's an apple'. Eventually I asked to be put on medication, my psychologist said it wouldn't work. But it did. The final straw with that crackpot was when I dropped out of school. I no longer could learn anything and the stress on my health became too high. She basically told be to ‘toughen up”. It was already a hard decision for me but of all people she should have been the one to support me. Ok, so I didn't really drop out of school. I took up distance education which is kind of like online home schooling. And It's the best decision I ever made. Needless to say, I ran out of that practise without turning back. I got into see a psychiatrist who I can say, without a doubt, saved my life. She upped my medication, gave me something to help me sleep and gave me help. For the first time ever, someone listened. She didn't make me feel like crap, she supported me. Within three months I was a totally different person. I was…happy.