I spent most of my high school years curled up in fetal position on my bathroom floor, shaking uncontrollably, and giving myself black eyes.

Yes, black eyes. My body would get so tense that I would literally pop blood vessels in my face, making it look like I spent my evenings taking part in a makeshift fight club in the back alley of a sketchy biker bar.

I have suffered from an intense anxiety disorder for my entire 20 years of life. I’m sure when I was younger, it wasn’t as intense, but I cannot remember a time when I didn’t feel like Atlas with the world on my shoulders. That seems cliché, but that’s how it feels; like you’re drowning in a pool of concrete that’s slowly hardening around you, and no matter how hard you fight to get to the top, you can’t escape.

According to a 2005 Archives of General Psychiatry report, 30 percent of Americans suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder, varying in symptoms and intensity. These disorders can affect anyone and everyone regardless or genetics, ethnicity, or gender. There are eight kinds of anxiety disorders: Phobias, Social Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Separation Anxiety.

Anxiety disorders and anxiety research have only been at the forefront of psychiatric research since 1980. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), anxiety disorders hadn’t even begun to be explored until after the Vietnam War when the idea of PTSD became prevalent. According to the APA website, until the ‘80s, very few people received treatment for these unexplored disorders, and panic attacks were often seen as “women’s problems,” as women were found to be more likely than men to go in search of treatment.

Today much more is known about these once mysterious disorders and much of their early stigma as “women’s problems” has been eliminated due to its prevalence in today’s media and popular culture. Celebrities like Cher, Eric Clapton, Howard Stern, Alanis Morisette, David Bowie, and even former first lady Barbara Bush have been treated for various anxiety disorders. As research grows, so do treatment options, which now include prescriptions, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and lifestyle changes. There is a treatment option to fit every case and every person. Essentially, no one has to live with an often-debilitating anxiety problem anymore. This is a great step forward because, trust me, living with anxiety is tough.

In my junior year of high school, I forgot my AP US History textbook in my locker. When I got home and sat down to do my homework, I realized it was missing, and I started to cry and panic. “How am I going to do my homework? I’m going to get yelled at and fail the class, and fail the AP test, and then I won’t get into college and I’ll be stuck working at McDonald’s for the rest of my life!” I couldn’t calm down. All the while my mother was telling me that I was blowing everything way out of proportion, and that missing one homework assignment wouldn’t make or break my academic career. She was trying to get me to realize how irrational I was being about the whole situation, but I still couldn’t calm down.

The worst part about having an anxiety disorder isn’t the panic attacks, the hyperventilating, the sobbing, or the self-inflicted black eyes, it’s that most people don’t understand. To this day, I still don’t think my parents comprehend what it feels like to genuinely panic. To not know where your next breath is coming from, to get so dizzy that you need to grip on to something so tightly that it leaves bruises on your palms for weeks, and to be so oxygen deprived from breathing in such short bursts that your entire face tingles and goes numb, like a sleeping limb.

Anxiety and panic attacks are vicious cycles, and once they start, it’s hard to get them to stop. You’re panicking, and you try to calm yourself down, but the longer you aren’t able to calm down, the more stressed out you get about trying to calm down, and the more stressed you get, the more you panic. Most of the time, trying to fight off a panic attack is like trying to cure the common cold with antibiotics. You can make a futile attempt with breathing exercises, inhalers, and peaceful visualization, but in the end you just have to let it run its course.

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder; when the littlest thing goes wrong (like how I forgot my textbook), I freak out, which often progresses into Panic Disorder, where I can’t breathe and give myself bruises and black eyes. My psychiatrist also thinks I have Separation Anxiety, as I cried for everyday for an entire semester when I first left Albany and came to Buffalo for school. My life felt empty and useless without my parents around. Most kids thrive on the freedom of college, but before I saw a doctor and got help, it almost killed me. I couldn’t get out of bed some days, and I swung into a bout of depression. I couldn’t make friends because I was so miserable, and it didn’t help that my roommate hated me, though I can’t say I blame her. I was an anti-social buzzkill. I lived for school, Richmond dining hall dinner, and hour-long phone calls to my mom.

I was a walking zombie. With my anxiety from leaving home in a duet with my normally anxious personality, I was a wreck, but I hadn’t yet reached my breaking point. Things got a bit better after I joined this lovely magazine you’re reading and made some terrific friends. I thought I was finally getting a handle on my anxiety, but it’s easy to lie to yourself. I wasn’t handling it; I was getting better at hiding it because I didn’t want my friends and family to worry about me. Granted, I still had some “mental breakdowns” when life became too much, but I could have those behind closed doors, alone.

My breaking point came in January of 2008. At this point I had been consciously denying my problem for at least four years. My grandfather died three days before the spring semester started. His death and the fact that I was going to miss the first two days of the semester caused me to have the worst anxious breakdown of my life. I remember that day and how all of a sudden I felt like everything in my life was crashing down. I was starting to lose my cool. When I stepped outside to get some air, naturally, I accidentally stepped in dog poop. I barged into my house yelling about how much I hate pets (which is a blatant lie), when I finally realized how ridiculous I sounded, I lost my mind and started crying.

I sat in my bathtub, with the shower head running, trying to wash the poop off my shoe, all the while still fully clothed, drenched, and sobbing about how much I missed my grandfather and how I was missing school. I then started shaking because I was so angry at myself, for thinking about school when my grandfather had just died. One of the people I loved the most in the entire world had died, and all I could think about was getting a few crappy syllabi. I grabbed the edge of my shower door so hard to steady myself that to this da,y I still have a blood vessel bruise on my right hand. I gave myself the biggest black eye I had ever had. It looked like Hulk Hogan succumbed to ‘roid rage and socked me a good one, right in my left eye. My face went totally numb. I couldn’t even feel the spray from the shower head hitting my cheeks. I couldn’t breathe. My mom had to hug me to her chest so I could try to mirror her calm breathing because nothing else worked.

I stayed in my bathtub, under the fall of the shower water, in jeans and a tank-top, for over two hours. Eventually, I was finally calm enough to lift myself up and move into my room. I was so physically exhausted from my attack that as I ripped off my wet clothes, I didn’t even bother finding new ones. I lay on my bed naked and slept for just 12 hours.

The next day I went to go see my doctor at the request of my mom. My doctor told me that what I was experiencing wasn’t normal. It sounds obvious now, but up until that point, I had no idea I had a disorder, because how I was acting was all I had ever known. I was apprehensive about taking pills, so I started out with therapy, where I would sit in a room three times a week and learn how to “visualize myself calmly and rationally.” I was supposed to do this whenever I felt an attack coming on; unfortunately I think that I had lived with anxiety far too long for this to work properly. I kept having panic attacks, so I had to go back to the drawing board. For the next few months I tried everything my doctor suggested for calming myself: talking to my parents, yoga, herbal teas, you name it, I tried it. Yet, I was still having panic attacks.

Eventually, my doctor prescribed Lexapro, a common anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. I was still hesitant to start taking a drug like this, having heard all the horror stories about how they backfire, and can sometimes lead to suicidal tendencies or make you really tired, but at that point, I was sick of uncontrollable anxiety running my life. I had already tried everything else; why not give this a shot?

I was only on the pills for a week, when I started to see a difference. I was still on edge about certain things (like school work, and important things I had to get done; hey, I’ll always be that way), but for the first time in a long time, I finally felt like myself. I felt free, like I could go out with friends and have fun without my anxious brain nagging me every step of the way.

It’s been six months since my last self-inflicted black eye and my last huge panic attack; though I did have a small one just three days ago when I couldn’t stop thinking about my piles of homework. Still, it’s the best feeling in the world to finally be free of something that has held you back for so long. Better living through chemistry, I guess. And from now on, I’m only going to go in the bathtub for showers.