I can think of a few more idioms to describe my current state of mind. I’m caught between a rock and hard place, grasping at straws and it’s like dire straits all up in here. Life is busy. Conference week is here, the holidays are coming up, I’m giving feedback on informational essays, and teaching 4th graders division. That, my friends, is the tip of the iceberg.

But I digress… There’s an uncomfortable truth that I don’t often share and don’t talk about. It’s an emotion I’ve battled for years. My entire life, if I’m being completely honest. Although I didn’t have a name for it when I was a kid. Now I recognize it as fact and a regular part of my life.

Anxiety.

I don’t recall when it first started, but it’s been a recurring theme in my life. There are the elementary school memories. Like the time I slammed my finger in the car door and the panic that ensued wasn’t that I had to open the door to remove my finger, or the fact that the nail was already broken in two pieces. The panic I felt in that moment was that if I left my younger sister in the car to go get help, she would be kidnapped. Then there was the time that I was sitting in school, and I heard a fire engine. Within seconds, my chest was pounding, and I was in tears because I just knew that my house burnt down.

The anxiety didn’t lessen as I got older, but I got really good at hiding it. I was just nervous about the test; I’d feel better after a good night’s sleep because everything looks better in the morning. It was when I married and became a mother it became harder to hide and, at times, felt debilitating. I was good at keeping it from my kids, even though on the inside I was literally freaking out. I think my breaking point was the first time my husband was deployed to the Middle East. I had a two and a four-year old. I fought my panic by avoiding the news, running, moving to stay with family while he was overseas, anything I could do to stay afloat when consumed by the visions of officers arriving at my door to inform me that he wasn’t coming home.

Mind over matter wasn’t enough.

The doctor put me on medication. My symptoms lessened and I no longer ached all over and sat in the dark, taking deep breaths and feeling like a complete and total failure- to my kids and my husband. It’s really difficult to admit that you truly can’t handle it all.

Today, I am not on medication for my anxiety, but I’m also not under the assumption that I will not need it ever again. I still struggle to let things go and to not worry about things that I cannot control. I still fear for the safety of my loved ones. I still question my decisions and have to remind myself that social media is a beast in itself, and that by allowing the hate and opinions of others to take root in my mind, I will never feel completely free.

I have to exercise. Living with celiac disease, I have to manage my diet. I have to take Vitamin D every single day. I have to take deep breaths in times of stress. I have to allow myself to cry. I have to sneak away during gatherings to have a few quiet moments to myself. I have to give myself grace in knowing that I will never have all of the answers. I have to recognize that if the moment comes when I am once again sitting in my dark, bedroom closet struggling to pick myself up that it’s time to visit my doctor.

Anxiety is real. It’s painful and overwhelming. There’s also shame behind admitting to suffering from it. I hope that by sharing my truth, I am opening the door for someone to seek help. By talking about it, I hope I’m allowing someone else to find the support they need and to know that they’re not alone.

It’s a vicious cycle. Just one last idiom to leave you with. See what I did there?