Writer Biography

Kaylee Rane graduated from Riverton High School in 2017 and is studying Pre Veterinary Science. She has been working as a vet technician and loves her job! When she is not working or studying, Rane enjoys singing, playing the piano, ukulele, and guitar, or just reading a good book. She is the youngest of six children and has ten nieces and nephews. When asked, her roommates would describe her as spunky, hilariously dramatic, and occasionally loud. She hopes to serve an LDS mission soon and one day to be the mother of many children and/or cats.

This essay was composed in September 2017 and uses MLA documentation.

LIVING WITH ANXIETY is like going through life with your mind working in overdrive.

I am in third grade. We sit on the hard, tightly woven carpet frequently used in public school classrooms while Mrs. Melton reads to us from a thick chapter book. Despite the discomfort from sitting on the hard floor, even for our young, flexible bodies, this is by far my favorite part of the school day. I love books. I love listening to a story and finding myself transported to another world that seems so much more intriguing than mine, certainly more exciting despite the prevalent dangers that await me.

While listening to the book, a story about owls who break away from a corrupt government and develop a new society, I start to become aware of a sensation in my throat. It seems tight, full of phlegm, making it increasingly harder to breathe. The more I am aware of it, the more threatening it becomes. I begin to eye the drinking fountain not far from where I sit, but with so many relaxed bodies covering my pathway to the water source, it does not seem that a drink will be an option. I desperately want to cough, and not just a little involuntary exhale but a sharp bark to open my tightening airway. Knowing what a disruption this will cause to this perfect, peaceful scene that surrounds me, I force myself to stay silent, awaiting my certain death.

I fidget where I sit. Straighten my back. Take deep, shaky breaths. Why do all the students around me not see my life-threatening struggle? How can they just sit there while I am moments from slumping lifeless, no air left in my lungs? As the minutes pass, something will catch my attention and cause me to forget my current dilemma. Without my noticing, my throat will start to relax. Then, suddenly, my focus will snap back to the terror in my stomach, and my airway will once again contract.

I am not sure how young I was when anxiety first began to alter my life. Seeing as anxiety’s sharp claws mark a majority of the memories I have of my childhood, I’d say far too young. Living with anxiety is like going through life with your mind working in overdrive. Every person occasionally gets afraid, a human instinct that has been passed down from primitive ages.

These fears are often things that could be harmful or decrease the quality of life, such as heights, spiders, the darkness, or failure. Anxiety differs from these types of fears and stress by blowing a situation more out of proportion than the present threat. It is persistent and has the potential to impair daily function. Telling someone with anxiety to “forget about it” or that “it’ll be okay” is often worthless because if you try to push away an irrational fear unresolved, your mind will soon bring it back to surface with more urgency in an attempt to protect you. The best way to overcome anxiety is to face it head on with an air of unimportance. The person basically has to say, “Oh hey, anxiety! No fooling me I know who you are sit in that corner. I’ll get around to dealing with you when I’m not busy.” Confronting anxiety can be a terrifying concept for a child who doesn’t understand the way their mind works.

—

I stare through the darkness at the ceiling of an extra bedroom in my sister’s house. Feeling the old wires push into my ribs, I’m lying on my back, muscles stiff against the sway of a pull-out couch. My wide eyes memorize the angle at which light slants in through the door, a door in which my older sister’s appearance will soon come. I concentrate on my breathing. I desperately suck in the basement air and feel it squeeze down my tight throat. My heart pounds. My mind races too fast for me to grasp the odd logic swirling behind my eyes.

My straining ears catch the sound of my sister’s footsteps padding down the stairs.

“Sorry, I was almost done getting Kaleb to sleep when he noticed me slipping out of his room and started crying for more milk.” She plops down on the makeshift bed next to me. “Did you get settled in on your own alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” is all I manage to get out. I try to steady my labored breathing and hide the panic in my eyes. I just want my sister to go to bed, yet deep inside I also hope she will see my dilemma and somehow give me any reason for fear to evaporate. My heart, desperate for relief, betrays my attempts to hide what I feel. Concern crosses my sister’s brow.

“Are you alright Kaylee?” she asks.

“I’m just struggling to breathe a bit,” I reply, tears starting to slip out of my eyes. My sister, having a child with asthma, misunderstands my statement and whisks me outside so that I can fill my lungs with the cold night air. She calls my parents, not wanting me in her care when I am having apparent breathing problems.

As I sit on the cement front porch, waiting into the wee hours of the night, I cry. My sister thinks I cry from fright of not being able to breathe, but no. That would be a much too rational fear. I sit and sob at my inability to voice the anxiety in my heart, slowly letting it eat me alive because what other option do I have?

—

Experiencing anxiety is an odd thing because it is often hard for the person facing it to realize what it is. The thought processes that come with anxiety feel reasonable to the person because their mind just works this way. The alarming part is the physical symptoms anxiety brings. Anxiety is often accompanied by an increased heart rate, stomach aches, and difficulty breathing (such as the choking sensations I often felt at a young age). It can also cause feelings of weakness in the limbs or tingling skin as well as difficulties in falling asleep.

Anxiety doesn’t ever go away, but it doesn’t have to rule one’s life either. Coping methods can be found. I once read an article that said, “An anxious mind is a strong, powerful mind, as anyone who has tried to rationalize themselves out of anxiety will tell you. An anxious mind can outrun, out power and outwit rationality and logic any day of the week. What if you could harness the strength and power of that fiercely protective mind and use it to work for you instead of against you?” (Young)

—

“Mom! Mommy! Look what I just found! This mustard expired on June 8th of 2004! That was” I pause to count on my fingers, “six years ago!” I stare in disgust at the old, yellow bottle in my hands.

Tonight, all of my siblings will gather in my backyard for a mid-summer BBQ_, a big event seeing as I have five older siblings, many who are old enough to have children of their own. My mom is crazed as she always is when guests are coming, even though these guests are nothing but her offspring. Being so busy with so much to prepare, I have become her slave, running here and there to do her bidding. My current job is to find ketchup and mustard to put on the food table. The ketchup is easy to find since my dad uses it daily, but we use mustard rarely; thus, I have to search the dark, smelly corners of the fridge to locate it.

My mom breezes past me in a huffy panic, rushing to whatever thing is next for her to prepare. “The mustard is fine, Kaylee. It’s just a condiment; go put it on the table.” I eye the bottle with crushes sticking to the cap and then take it out to the food table, being sure to wash my hands once or twice on returning to the house.

I later spend the night warning each of my family members about the expiration date of the mustard and how rotten it certainly has turned. No one pays me much attention except, my mother who later chastises me for disrupting the meal.

—

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “anxiety” as “a pathological state characterized by inappropriate or excessive apprehension or fear, which may be generalized or attached to particular situations” (“Anxiety,” def. N.4). Anxiety is often not evident to the person feeling it, but once identified, it can be much easier to handle. Identification is a large part of how I can better function now as an adult; it is not that my anxiety is gone, but instead, I am used to the way it feels, and I know exactly how it works because I’ve gone through its cycle so many times.

—

The talking doctor: a place where apparently concerned mothers take their noncompliant children to do absolutely nothing productive so that those children can get rid of all their “worry bugs.” Seems like my mom’s form of torture to me.

I sit alone on a large couch, hunched over a pillow and staring at a bookshelf bursting with useless knickknacks to avoid eye contact with the strange lady sitting in a chair across from me. I’ve been to this place many times before, back when I was very young, and my mother wasn’t ever able to leave me alone because of my separation anxiety. But I don’t have that problem anymore, so why am I back? Despite those previous trips to this odd building, it remains an unfamiliar place and a hated trip for me, always full of tears and every-once-in-a-while screaming (although, that was mostly when I was really little).

The strange lady stares at my slumped figure, “Kaylee, why do you think your mother is trying to poison you?”

“I don’t know!” I reply, and it’s the truth. I have no idea why the thought has plagued me for the past month, filling every waking moment.

My mother is a caring, experienced woman, and thus I have no apparent reason to think such a thing, yet the thought never leaves my mind and causes a sick feeling to encompass my chest during meals. A large part of my brain even knows it is not true; my mom is the person I trust most in the world, and she would never want to bring me harm. So why does the dread course through my veins, the fear fill my thoughts? I begin to cry, so the lady leaves to speak with my mom.

The next morning, I find that the mustard is no longer in our fridge, and suddenly, inexplicably, I find myself relieved of the worry that my mother wants me dead.

Works Cited

“Anxiety, N. 4.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, June 2017, www.oed. com/view/Entry/8968. Accessed 14 Sept. 2017.

Young, Karen. “Dealing with Anxiety: Using the Strength of an Anxious Mind to Calm Anxiety.” Hey Sigmund, 18 Sept. 2016, https:// www.heysigmund.com/dealing-with-anxiety-anxious-mind-calm/. Accessed 15 Sept. 2017.

Works Consulted

Craske, Michelle G, and Murray B. Stein. “Anxiety.” Focus, American Psychiatric Association, 10 Apr. 2017.

Pritchard, Emma-Louise. “13 Physical Symptoms You Didn’t Realize Were Caused by Anxiety.” Msn. Microsoft, 5 Oct. 2017, https:// www.msn.com/en-gb/health/mindandbody/13-physical- symptoms-you-didnt-realise-were-caused-by-anxiety/ar- BBAVr2Y?li=BBoPH6F. Accessed 16 Sept. 2017.