The bells are tingling, crescendoing impatiently, creating a ruckus of taps within your chemically imbalanced head

Your hands shake with all the untold words, bottled up within your throat and unable to explode like a volcano of molten rock until people stand in shock and admire not the destruction but the beauty

You enclose yourself into a small corner as soon as their is an unknown force that you cannot adequately deal with and hope they leave soon so you can lower your defenses just a bit; for you are afraid of leaving the house and being stared down until you run away like a kicked dog with his tail tucked between his legs

You apologize for things you didn't do, not out of guilt but because you feel obligated to

For you see, when you have social anxiety it is hard to communicate with anyone, even yourself. You live in fear of saying the wrong thing, of messing something up, of splitting apart like an egg cracked in the middle and all the yolk spilling out beyond your hands reaches

When you were a child, you would ask the closest person to hold your hands and count to ten, and that closest person was usually yourself

Your heart flutters like a butterflies  wings flapping wildly in a storm

Your breathing shudders as you try urgently to not shed tears not from sadness but from fear

Some describe social anxiety as naught but a tiny fear when in reality it is more like treading open water in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight, and the waves threaten to push you down until you are far out of reach

Some imagine people with anxiety as being introverts, when in reality it also happens to extroverts. It happens to all races, genders, and sexualities

When you live with anxiety, it is all you can think about. You strategize how to survive each obstacle of the day

One thing you can tell them to do if you cross paths and you notice their shallow breathing and their shaking and sweaty palms is to just

Breathe.