Anxiety, Rachels Story.

It was the spring of my junior year of high school — a particularly stressful time for many students. I had schoolwork to do, APs to study for, nightly soccer practice, and pit band rehearsal for the school musical. To put it lightly, I was overloaded.

One night while I was sitting in my final dress rehearsal for the school play, I started thinking about my boyfriend. We'd been dating since the beginning of the school year, and because he was my first boyfriend, I was very inexperienced when it came to relationships. As I was sitting in rehearsal that night, thoughts about our relationship just kept popping up in my head. Where was our relationship going? Was it a good, healthy relationship? What was it really based on?

While these were normal questions for anyone to ask, my reactions to them were both mentally and physically overwhelming. I couldn't focus on playing my music, and I started breathing too quickly and trembling, convinced that my boyfriend would dump me and my world would fall apart. I kept imagining only the worst outcomes from this situation, until finally I couldn't sit with the band anymore. I had to leave the auditorium during the last full dress rehearsal and run to the bathroom, where I began retching in one of the stalls.