My Experience With Anxiety

I've never told anyone that I suffer with anxiety. I'm such a closed book as you could say and hate telling people my problems. I've heard people I hang round with constantly saying 'what even is anxiety' 'if someone wanted to hang out they would, don't make excuses' 

I never knew I had anxiety until I really read people's side to it and thought omg that's 100% me I couldn't explain it any better!! I always knew I was different though. 

I was always shy in school, never knowing how to make friends. Afraid of not being accepted. Afraid of being the odd one out. just scared that i was constantly annoying them with my presence that they couldn't wait to get rid of me. 

Even when I got asked to read allowed in english lessons I could just feel it in my eyes and throat that at any second I was about to cry. I was a good reader it was the only thing in school I was good at, it was the thought of everyone just staring and hearing me read. What if I didn't know a word and messed up. What if I started putting a voice on without realising it and everyone started laughing?! 

Recently it's been getting worse. People ask me to hang out and the fear of that just gets too much, my mind goes into overdrive of why I shouldn't. Everyone will stare at me. They don't want me to hang out with them anyway they're just being polite. 

Even in work, I work in a pub and i'm not a social person and on my first shift my boss even said I was quiet and all I wanted to do was make a good impression, I tried talking to the staff but I didn't know what to say. I'm no good at small talk. 

On halloween weekend I went back to liverpool to work some shifts, I felt like the new staff all over again even though i'd been there all over summer. I had a mini panic attack just over thinking the situation, that I was being left out, they were all talking about me, I was the loner of the group. I even start over thinking the shift in general that I couldn't cope with the rush, i'd get everyone's orders all wrong, i'll forget what shorts we had. 

I wish I knew how to stop these thoughts but every day they just seem to be getting worse. I can't even leave my room at times to go the shop across the road for a pint of milk. Just thinking that the shop assistant will think i'm strange just going for milk, or that if I don't wear make up people will stare at me. How do I cross the road, what if I look strange, what if I go to cross and a car goes instead and I get in the way. 

I always hope i'll get confident and be the type of person to just walk up to everyone and say hi. whenever I try to be confident I just be funny instead, it's something that come natural and having banter with my friends just stops everything going through my mind. 

I just wish I didn't overthink situations with my friends and that I could just be myself without this voice going a million miles in my head. It's taking over me. But i wont let it.

Feeling Like You Don't Fit In

This is probably going to be quite a deep post as i’m listening to Nathan Sykes’ album.. damn you Nathan. However, this is going to be all about friendships and my life experience with having the worst friends and how i'm getting through it.

I’m not going to lie, I used to have loads of friends back in primary school but then when we moved off into secondary school. Me and my friends drifted apart and I was left alone and shy, not knowing how to make friends as I mainly kept the same friends from reception up to year 6. 

In secondary school, I was always the odd one out in my friendship group it was really odd I had no one else to turn to except this friendship group. I mean, I had different friends in some of my classes but I wasn't suddenly going to go and join their friendship groups. That wasnt me to tell people how I felt and I liked everyone to think that my life was perfect and I was really happy with my friends. But in all honestly I hated every minute with them and I would often skip school just so I wouldn't have to deal with them.

Friends are meant to make you feel happy and positive, but these just wouldn't make me feel like I was one of them. I was just the odd one that would follow them around at dinner and break times I hated it so much. I’m not going to go into detail but in year 10/11 I can't really remember, I went off and joined another friendship group who were friends from my science class. I didn't especially like these friends as they were the ‘chavs’ of the year whereas the other ‘friendship’ group were the sort of populars so it was a massive drop. Back then I really cared about who I was friends with like, did I really want to be seen hanging round with these when the people I used to hang round with were so cool?? But I had no other choice. 

Moving on from secondary school dilemmas i’m now in university and the past two years i’ve always had one main best friend from my course but never really hung out with anyone else. So last year when we got separated into different groups, I felt like I was back in secondary school again with no friends to turn to at dinner time as most of the class had gone into the new groups with their old friends..lucky for them right. This meant at dinner time they would go off and eat together at restaurants, leaving me to just walk home in the dinner hour thank god I lived only 10 minutes away from uni otherwise I literally don’t know what i’d do. 

It was a hard beginning of the year for me I even ended up going to see my tutor about it saying how upset I was and that I just wanted to move groups again because I just didn't fit in and I didn't have anyone. He wouldnt let me move telling me that it would be good for me and in the industry I wouldn't work with anyone I knew. But he didn't understand my past and I just hated having to cling onto people hoping they’d want to hang arround with me rather than having me forced onto them.

I did end up talking to some girls that I was friends with in first year but I mean I was only friends with them because we would speak over twitter we weren't bffs but I sat next to them in class and when we went to Paris I even hung around with them at times but I felt like I was still trying to fit in with there group just hoping that they would accept me. 

In this year, there are no groups we’re all in one big class. I now have two friendship groups where I'm rather close to all of them I would like to say. One of the friendship groups is the one from last year and I even went out for dinner/tea and some cocktails with them yesterday and I can honestly say it was one of the best days i’ve had in the last few years. I felt so included and it just made so happy that they actually wanted me there to celebrate one of their birthdays with them.

This might sound so weird to some people like, 'it was only for a day, she must be really weird not getting invited to anything much whats wrong with her?' I’ve thought all those things about myself too what is wrong with me that makes me feel that people don’t want to be my friend. I think because of back in year 10/11 I had such horrible things said to me from my ‘friends’ who I would hang around with since year 7 it’s so hard to trust and get close to people. If I hang around with people would they just get bored of me, do they even want me there, are they talking about me behind my back thinking of ways to get rid of me when i go the toilet? ALL of these go through my mind when i’m with a number of people, it’s so hard for me and I just wish I could just chill with people and not have to worry hopefully I will be able to one day.

This may be a bit rambling and deep, but felt like I just wanted to write all these down and some of you may be in these circumstances. It WILL get better.