I shake and stress out over it.  I can’t look away.  I try and try, but I just can’t get away from it.  Eternally screaming, feeling terrified and alone, I am periodically hit by freight trains that appear out of nowhere.  My hands shake as someone tries talking to me.  I try smiling and being polite as my palms grow sweaty, and my tongue goes numb.

I stress out over tilted photos in a frame, pencils with broken lead, or a twisted strap on a book bag.  Books out of a certain order and clothing littering a room cause screams to bounce through my head.  Improper grammar makes me want to rage, and my sister’s insistent complaining about anything and everything makes it worse.  Every day I fight to maintain sanity against these and more. I can’t take this anymore, echoes through my head daily.

I have social anxiety, mild depression, and OCD.  Every day I struggle with social interactions, distancing myself from others, and stressing out about anything out of place.  Each time I try to talk to someone, words don’t want to come out. They are lodged in my throat, choking me until I give in.  I try to barrel through it, but all I can do is smile nervously as I stumble over every word.  Embarrassed after the conversation is over, I start stressing out over it before I distance myself from people that day.  I can’t deal with it.  I love talking to my friends, but I despise when I have to talk in front of a classroom or whenever I’m the center of attention.

Piece by piece, I distance myself from other people, I feel like I’m beginning to lose my mind.  That is when the depression hits me.  I struggle through it, but it’s like trying to push a train along the tracks.  Before, I would cut when I felt depressed, but that stopped four years ago.  Any time I look at my wrists, I see the marks I left again, and I feel worse than before, like I’m a problem.

My OCD is worse than the other two.  Each day I find at least twenty different pieces of the pointless puzzle that are out of place in this world that I can’t fix, and it drives me insane.  I want to scream and fix it all, but I know I can’t.  My hands quiver as the stress takes over.  I can’t deal with this anymore.  It’s torturing me.

The stress slowly gnaws at me from the inside out.  I try listening to music, watching television, reading, or playing video games to relieve the stress.  At times, it does help, but others I continue stressing out about the small pieces that don’t even matter.  I scream at myself as I wonder, Why am I doing this?

Every day I go through this, but I prevail.  I always remind myself that I have been through worse than what I am going through.  I used to have suicidal thoughts, thinking that it would stop the pain of the depression at the time, but that ended four years ago, just like the cutting.  I was thinking of a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  Now looking back, I see how stupid it was to think that when it came to my depression.  I know from experience; it will get better.