Leah McCann Smith | Writer & Editor

Anxiety.

It feels like your heart is racing (not the good kind of racing—the kind when you meet that girl or guy you’ve been eyeing at the bar for an hour, when he or she finally heads your way to introduce themselves). The thing is, the racing could last for hours. It often does. And when you can’t turn it off, you start to feel it all throughout your body—your head, your back, your feet, your limbs, even your eyeballs. As if living in a place like New York City wasn’t taxing enough…now you’re factoring in your head and your heart, and that’s a whole lot to handle.

Sometimes, the episodes are short—just a few minutes long—like if something scares you out of the blue, and your heart starts pumping real fast, but usually slows down after a bit. Other times, the episodes last for hours, an upward of endless heartbeats and short breathing until you realize you need to stop, focus, and lengthen your breaths to be longer and deeper.

During an attack, you feel stuck. Like you’re in the deep end of the swimming pool, deep enough to feel like as long as you swim down, you’ll never reach the bottom. Or you’ll also never be able to float back up without running out of air. You’re stuck.

It is not fun. It’s taxing, mentally and physically, on your body and your mind. It just straight up sucks. Like when you’re on crutches and you can’t participate on the playground or at soccer practice that day. Sucks like that incoming pimple that you know is gonna be a bad one, but it’s too late and you can’t stop it. It’s already surfaced.

Eventually, the anxiety goes away, even if just for a short while. But shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t the calm, happy living constitute the majority of your days, with the occasional freakout here and there? It’s not fair. And it sucks not knowing how all this came on.

What’s the solution? Is it a change of scenery? A new daily routine? A better diet and more exercise? That’s what the lifestyle blogs are saying. Ha. I’m writing one of those right now.