Try to imagine that you are in my shoes.

You can never understand fully and we both know that, but I want you to try. I want you to feel my pain and I want you to feel my hurt and I want you to know that I am not overreacting and that my suffering is real and valid. I'm not doing this to hurt you, I promise, but I'm so tired. I'm tired of you disrespecting the way I feel and acting like I'm making a big deal out of nothing.

No, close your eyes, it will never work if you're looking at me like that. You need to believe that you are me; you need to feel it.

Imagine you are standing out on the middle of an empty street with your eyes closed. Listen to the soft whirr of the wind moving slowly past your ears, brushing them tenderly as you shiver from the cold. You're not wearing a jacket and you scold yourself for not checking the weather forecast before leaving the house earlier.

You hear a noise.

You open your eyes.

A truck is flying towards you, there is not enough time for it to slow down and you know it is inevitable that you should be hit.

That moment; hold onto it.

Imagine you are living in a constant state of that exact moment for hours; days; weeks.. That's what I have to live through.

You still don't understand? Of course not, that's okay. Like I said; you won't ever be able to fully comprehend it because your brain refuses to let you believe that such demons could actually lurk behind closed doors in your mind.

Some of us just aren't able to keep those doors close.

Do you remember the scenario to put you in? That scenario represented my life. I can be thinking about the most menial thing like forgetting to wear a coat when suddenly a wave of panic – such as the fear of being hit by a truck – washes over me and there's absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it or make it go away. All I can do is breathe and whisper to myself that it is going to be okay.

Sometimes the pain can last for weeks and there is nothing; nothing I can do.

There you go again; telling me that I'm overreacting. Yes, I smile a lot of the time. Yes, I laugh and I spend time with my friends. Yes, I do the things I love. But you don't see the amount of effort that goes into all of those tasks that you do as a daily routine.

That smile physically hurts me to produce. I'm sure you've smiled before when you haven't felt up to it, right? Exactly; that's me every day. Spending time with friends feels like a chore to me and, even if they are all speaking to me, I feel like I'm being rude and awkward and I want nothing more than to get away from them. I force myself to do the things I love because I know I get even a small bit of enjoyment from them. It's never easy and it always hurts, but I do it. I sit through school and I try my hardest to do my best, but it never feels like enough.

You don't see me once I get home. I collapse into a pile of pain and regret; curling up under the duvet and letting it swallow me up. They say that anxiety keeps you up at night and, while that can sometimes be true for me, it isn't completely honest. Anxiety sends me to bed at eight some nights because I am so damn tired from the extreme effort it took me to go to school. I don't get to socialise with my family; I hardly get to spend time with my dog, who has just become accustomed to the fact that it's not me who gets to bring her on walks and the main quality time she gets with me is us both being curled up on my bed, asleep.

Please don't say that, I know I have a choice. But it doesn't feel that way to me. The words 'I can't' have become a part of my everyday vocabulary and I know it should be 'I won't', but I don't want to admit that I can no longer successfully do the things I used to because I'm simply not brave enough.

I think the main thing you don't understand is that I don't want to get better. Don't scoff at me, I'm telling you the truth. I have become so comfortable in this hurt and these nerves that I don't know if I could cope without them. It's as if saying you're going to take away an organ from me. My mentality is so much more than that and I don't know how I would function as a 'normal' person. The things haunting me have also inspired me and I would not have achieved some of the greatest things in my life without them, even if it does mean missing out on the things I once loved.

I don't want you to hate me for this, although I can already see how your face has changed when you look at me. I see now that this was a bad idea, but I don't regret it. It's okay if you don't understand, I think that I am just going to have to learn to accept that fact somehow.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me, I'm sorry that you dislike me for it. But just know that you aren't the first and you won't be the last. I hope that one day I can explain my story without getting that horrible look thrown at me.

I'm sorry.